Resilience at the crossroads: Strategic resilience in UK rail — responding to disruption, shaping the future

The UK rail sector is undergoing structural, cultural and operational change, creating both opportunities and challenges for resilience. This paper examines how London North Eastern Railway (LNER) has adapted its business continuity and emergency planning practices in response to prolonged industrial action, climate-related disruption and sector-wide reform under the transition to Great British Railways. Drawing on practical examples, including the contingency planning model developed during 2022-24 strike activity and lessons learned from Storm Babet, it explores how structured planning cycles, scenario-based exercising and knowledge retention can improve organisational readiness. The paper situates LNER's experience within the wider UK rail context, highlighting persistent systemic barriers to resilience maturity such as fragmented governance, inconsistent adoption of the Gold-Silver-Bronze command model, and limited integration of cross-sector frameworks such as the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles. Comparative analysis with North American approaches, including the Incident Command System and publicly accessible training platforms, illustrates the potential benefits of more formalised, scalable incident management models. Three priorities are proposed for embedding resilience into the future rail system: integrating dormant and systemic risks into exercising programmes, maintaining continuity and institutional knowledge during structural transition, and adopting shared, capability-based assessment frameworks. By linking operational case studies with broader governance considerations, the paper offers both practitioners and policy makers insights into how UK rail operators can strengthen resilience as a strategic capability, ensuring preparedness for complex, high-impact disruptions in an era of organisational change. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.