The Be Ready Checklist Explained, Item by Item

The government's Be Ready campaign comes with a one-page checklist — nine categories of things every household is asked to keep. You can download the official checklist PDF itself, but a bare list doesn't tell you why each item is there or what "enough" looks like. This guide walks through every category, item by item, in plain English.

1. Water: 3 litres per person per day

This is the headline number and the most important item on the list. The guidance asks for three litres of bottled water per person per day for drinking — nine litres each across the three days, or 36 litres for a family of four — plus extra for cooking and washing.

Why so much? In a water supply failure, the taps are the first thing you miss. Three litres covers drinking and a little cooking; it doesn't cover flushing toilets or full washing, which is why the checklist adds wet wipes and hand sanitiser separately. Buy a couple of large bottles on each shop and you'll hit the target within a fortnight. Store them somewhere cool and dark, and rotate them — bottled water keeps for a long time, but check the dates once a year.

2. Food: three days of non-perishable, no-cook food

The ask is simple: enough tinned and dried food for three days that needs no fridge and no cooking. Think tinned meat, fish and vegetables, baked beans, dried fruit, nuts, crackers, peanut butter and cereal bars.

The "no cooking" part matters because a power cut kills your oven, microwave and kettle at once. Pick foods your household will actually eat — there's no point stocking tinned sardines nobody touches. A good rule: buy one extra tin per weekly shop and put it in a dedicated box. Within two months you'll have three days covered without noticing the cost. Check our budget guide for a week-by-week build-up plan.

3. Hygiene: hand sanitiser, wet wipes, toiletries

When the water's off, hygiene gets difficult fast. The checklist asks for hand sanitiser, wet wipes and basic bathroom products — enough to stay clean for a few days without running taps.

This is one of the cheapest categories. A big pack of wet wipes and a bottle of sanitiser cost a few pounds and last for ages. Add them to the same box as your food so everything's in one place. If anyone in the house wears contact lenses, keep a spare pair and solution in the kit too — you can't rinse lenses without clean water.

4. Light and warmth: torch, batteries, blankets

A torch with spare batteries, plus blankets, sleeping bags and warm clothing. Winter power cuts are the scenario here — British homes lose heat fast without power, and it gets dark early.

Don't overthink the torch: a basic LED torch with a pack of spare batteries does the job. Wind-up torches exist and never need batteries, but the cheap ones are dim — a battery torch plus spares is the safer bet. Throw in a couple of candles and matches as backup, but never leave candles burning unattended, and never use a camping stove or barbecue indoors — carbon monoxide kills.

5. Communication: battery or wind-up FM radio + charged power bank

This one surprises people, but it's there for a reason. If mobile networks and the internet go down, official information still goes out on FM radio. A battery-powered or wind-up radio is how you'd hear emergency broadcasts in a serious outage.

Wind-up radios are cheap and need no batteries; battery models sound better. Either way, test it once so you know it works and you know where your local station is on the dial. The power bank is for your phone — keep it charged and check it every few months, because they slowly drain sitting in a drawer.

6. Money and documents: cash, ID copies, phone numbers

If card payments and online banking go down — which is exactly what a cyberattack scenario looks like — physical cash is how you buy things. The checklist asks for a mix of coins and notes, kept somewhere safe at home.

Just as important: copies of ID documents and a written list of important phone numbers. Most of us don't know a single number by heart any more. Write down family numbers, your GP, your energy supplier, your insurer and your bank's lost-card line. Photocopy or photograph passports and driving licences and keep the copies with the list. This step is free.

7. Medical: first aid kit + essential medication

A basic first aid kit — plasters, bandages, antiseptic, painkillers, any prescription basics — plus a working supply of essential medication. If anyone in your household takes daily medication, the single most useful thing you can do is keep a few days' buffer and know exactly when the next repeat prescription is due.

Check expiry dates on the first aid kit once a year. And if anyone relies on powered medical equipment, read our Priority Services Register guide — that's the free sign-up that flags your household to energy suppliers for extra help in outages.

8. Babies: formula, nappies, wipes

Households with infants need ready-to-feed formula, nappies and wipes for three days. Ready-to-feed matters because you can't safely make up powdered formula without clean water and a way to sterilise bottles. Keep a few extra nappies beyond the three days if you have the space — they're bulky but light.

9. Pets: food and water

Pet food and bottled water for your animals, for three days. Pets are easy to forget in a plan made for humans, so add their supplies to the same box. A spare lead and any pet medication go in too.

The grab bag

The checklist also suggests a "grab bag" — a small bag of essentials in case you have to leave home suddenly. Ours would hold: the document copies and phone list, some cash, medication, the power bank, a torch, water and a snack. Keep it by the door, not buried in the loft.

The bottom line

Nine categories sounds like a lot until you realise most of it is stuff you already own — blankets, warm clothes, tinned food, a phone charger. The gaps are usually the radio, the written phone list and the water. Start with those three, then build the rest gradually. As the campaign itself says: you don't need to do it all at once.