A report on the United Kingdom’s response to the Chinese coronavirus crisis has found that the government was “underprepared” for such a pandemic, stating that there were no “detailed plans” to deal with a coronavirus outbreak.

The National Audit Office (NAO) – the UK’s independent spending watchdog – found that the British government did not have the structures in place to effectively deal with an emergency such as the one brought on by the Wuhan virus.

The report states that the government failed to set out an overarching level of risk that they were willing to accept within pandemic scenarios. Additionally, the report found that the level of risk the government found acceptable was inconsistent, shifting early on in the pandemic.

The NAO wrote: “Like many other governments across the world, the UK government was underprepared for a pandemic like COVID-19. It will need to learn lessons from its preparations for and handling of whole-system risks, which will include making judgements on what level of preparations is appropriate.”

“The UK government and devolved administrations, along with the emergency services and other local responders, have clear responsibilities for identifying, assessing, preparing for and responding to emergencies, as well as supporting affected communities to recover,” the report said.

“For whole-system risks, the government needs to define its risk appetite to make informed decisions and prepare appropriately so that value for money can be protected.” the NAO continued.

This criticism echoes a similar review last year from the Public Accounts Committee, which detailed how major economic schemes, such as the furlough scheme, were never war-gamed, pre-planned, or even considered before the crisis.

The NAO report also criticised the pandemic plans that were in place prior to the COVID crisis.

While there were plans in place, they centred around either influenza viruses or “emerging high-consequence infectious disease[s]”, with high death rates such as Ebola or MERS, and as such were not applicable to less-lethal coronaviruses.

“Although the government had plans for an influenza pandemic, it did not have detailed plans for many non-health consequences and some health consequences of a pandemic like COVID-19,” the report said.

The auditor also found that many of the plans that were in place were not adequate to even deal with the scenarios they were created for, stating: “A review of pandemic planning arrangements, carried out by a cross-government working group in February and March 2020, rated 82 per cent of plans as being unable to meet the demands of any actual incident.”

The conclusions apparently back up previous claims made by Dominic Cummings, the former Chief Advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on the alleged inadequacies within multiple plans to deal with national emergencies.

Detailing his experiences in emergency preparations, Cummings highlighted how he was told by government advisors that the plan for solar flares was “completely hopeless”.

Cummings told the Parliamentary committee investigating Britain’s pandemic response that should a solar flare occur, “then we’ll all be in a worse situation than COVID”.

The National Audit Office report did find that one shining light during the pandemic, haling the “significant benefits” gained by preparations made for Brexit, which the NAO claimed enhanced the crisis capabilities of certain government departments.