About 3.1 million UK households cannot afford the three-day emergency food and water stockpile the government is asking every household to keep, according to analysis by the think tank Verdant. The estimate covers 6.4 million people, including 2.1 million children, and was reported by The Independent on 6 November.

The government launched its Be Ready campaign on 22 October 2026, the first stage of a three-year campaign run by the Cabinet Office. It asks households to be able to manage at home for three days if power, water, phones or the internet are disrupted, with bottled water at three litres per person per day, food that needs no fridge or cooking, and basics such as a torch, a battery or wind-up radio, a charged power bank, cash, a first-aid kit and medicines.

What the stockpile costs

Verdant priced a bare-minimum stockpile at the cheapest third of the prices the Office for National Statistics collects in shops. It costs about £12 per adult for three days, buying crackers, peanuts, peanut butter, tinned beans, tuna and fruit, dry cereal and nine litres of water. At typical prices it is nearer £20, and ready-to-feed baby formula adds about £12 per infant. That is food and water only, and excludes a torch, batteries or a wind-up radio.

Verdant counted a household as unable to afford the stockpile if it held less in savings than the stockpile costs and its income after housing costs was below the poverty line. On that basis, about one in nine households, or 11%, cannot afford even the minimal version. The think tank notes the figure is close to the 9% of households the Department for Work and Pensions already finds to be food insecure.

Who is most affected

A third of council tenants and a quarter of housing association tenants cannot afford the stockpile, against 4 to 5% of homeowners, Verdant found. Seven in ten of the households that cannot afford it are receiving Universal Credit. The food bank network Trussell has warned that families already struggling with the weekly shop have no margin to stock up.

The government’s advice is to build supplies up gradually, picking up an extra item or two during the normal shop. Verdant argues that for a household below the minimum, barely scraping through, there is no point at which it can afford to do so. The campaign itself does not use the word stockpile, and frames the advice around severe weather and everyday disruption rather than war. The government’s own 2026 survey found only 4% of people had enough bottled water for three days. Sources: Verdant and IGD.