Community mesh communications absent from UK civil resilience doctrine

LoRa mesh through Meshtastic is cheap, encrypted and licence-exempt in the UK at 868MHz, and hobbyists already run a national MQTT-bridged emergency text network alongside preparedness groups like UKSN. Local Resilience Forums and national resilience guidance assign no role, standard kit list or funding to neighbourhood-level data mesh. RAYNET provides recognised amateur-radio voice support to emergency services, and nothing covers community-owned digital messaging that survives power and telecoms outages, a gap highlighted by Storm Éowyn-class events and the 2025 Iberian blackout.

When mobile networks fail, communities currently have no sanctioned, practised fallback for local digital coordination. The hardware costs tens of pounds a node, and the missing ingredients are doctrine, training and modest procurement, classic under-provisioned public-good territory.

A Cabinet Office and MHCLG community resilience communications pilot funding mesh starter kits and training through Local Resilience Forums and town and parish councils, with published interoperability and governance guidance.

// Build together: Counterparty: one volunteer LRF or town/parish council for a mesh pilot; Cabinet Office sponsorship is the end-state.

Cheap hardware and hobbyist networks already exist and resilience doctrine assigns them no role; the stakes hinge on rare outages and no deadline pushes procurement.