Emergency Alerts - National Test - Sunday April 23rd at 3pm

• Message will be received on 4G and 5G mobile phones, along with sound and vibration for up to 10 seconds

• Emergency Alerts enable urgent messages to be broadcast to a defined area when there is an imminent risk to life, such as wildfires or severe flooding

• Brings UK in line with other countries such as the US and Canada who use the system

A UK-wide of the life-saving public Emergency Alerts system will take place at 3pm on Sunday 23 April.

Following successful pilots in East Suffolk and Reading, the test of the new Emergency Alerts system will see people receive a message on the home screen of their mobile phone, along with a sound and vibration for up to ten seconds.

For the test, the public does not need to take any action - the sound and vibration will stop automatically after ten seconds. All people need to do is swipe away the message or click ‘OK’ on their phone’s home screen - just like for a ‘low battery’ warning or notification - and continue to use their phone as normal.

Emergency Alerts have already been used successfully in a number of other countries, including the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Japan, where it has been widely credited with saving lives, for example, during severe weather events. In the UK, alerts could be used to tell residents of villages being encroached by wildfires, or of severe flooding.

The Government has worked together with the emergency services and partners, including the Football Association and London Marathon, to make sure the national test has minimum impact on major events taking place on the day.

Emergency Alerts will transform the UK’s warning and informing capability; by working with mobile broadcasting technology it will provide a means to get urgent messages quickly to nearly 90 percent of mobile phones in a defined area when there is a risk to life, and provide clear instructions about how best to respond.

Best practice of Emergency Alerts in other countries have shown that they work more effectively in a real emergency if people have previously received a test, so they know what an alert looks and sounds like.

The system will be used very rarely - only being sent where there is an immediate risk to people’s lives - so people may not receive an alert for months or years.

You can find out further information on Emergency Alerts, including what they look and sound like at gov.uk/alerts

If you should be driving when the alert goes off you should not answer or read any messages on your mobile phone, but recognising the Emergency Alert should consider finding somewhere safe and legal to stop and do so.