The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is an executive agency of the Department and regulates medicines for human use, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion in the United Kingdom, with responsibility for ensuring medicines meet appropriate standards of safety, quality, and efficacy.

In 2024, the MHRA issued a new Strategy for Improving Safety Communications which set out its aim to reach more patients directly with accessible and helpful safety communications, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mhra-strategy-for-improving-safety-communications

The MHRA is committed to ensuring that all safety messages reach everyone who needs to receive them, especially those who are most vulnerable, including during the winter months.

Where patients, healthcare professionals, and other stakeholders need to be made aware of a safety issue, the MHRA will consider publishing and cascading a safety communication through multiple channels. These can include a National Patient Safety Alert, Recall, Drug Safety Update, or a Device Safety Information, as well as utilising the media and sustained and targeted campaigns on social media platforms aimed at reaching those at risk. These communications are issued to relevant target audiences including vulnerable patients and patient group representatives and are published on the MHRA’s website and delivered to healthcare professionals through various routes such as direct email or subscription communications.

The 500 new ambulances announced in the Department’s press release of 31 December 2025 form part of East of England Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust’s wider ambulance replacement and expansion programme.

Allocations have not been finalised at individual county level, meaning it is not possible at this stage to confirm how many of these vehicles will be deployed in Essex.

The Department for Energy Security & Net Zero works extensively with the energy sector to continually improve and maintain the resilience, preparedness and security of energy infrastructure against risks including severe weather events.

Ofgem provides a specific Worst Served Customers allowance through the RIIO-ED2 price control to provide funding to electricity Distribution Network Operators to improve the service experienced by those customers who receive the poorest levels of performance. Worst Served Customers are classified as being worst served because they experience interruptions caused by faults on the high voltage network. This often occurs in rural areas where the cost of improving the reliability of this part of the network is particularly high, in part due to the low volume of customers served by that part of the network.

We are also taking action to upgrade and expand electricity networks, including in rural areas, to ensure the network is ready to meet increasing demand. We are increasing capacity in the network by accelerating infrastructure build through our reforms to planning, regulation, supply chains regulation and a reformed connections process.

The main Government health winter campaigns are run by the UK Health Security Agency and NHS England, which the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) supports.

The MHRA also runs annual winter campaigns to raise public awareness of medicines and medical devices safety that achieves media coverage and social media engagement.

For example, the MHRA’s 2025/26 campaign provided five public safety tips covering medicines and medical devices. It achieved media coverage in national print and online, regional and trade press, as well as an interview on BBC One Breakfast.

The MHRA created and posted social media content throughout this period which was seen approximately 50,000 times. The MHRA also worked with key stakeholders, such as the National Fire Chiefs Council, to help amplify safety messages.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is an executive agency of the Department and regulates medicines for human use, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion in the United Kingdom, with responsibility for ensuring medicines meet appropriate standards of safety, quality, and efficacy.

Safety surveillance activity at the MHRA is funded through the annual service fee. Recent and sufficient fee increases mean that this funding now covers all required surveillance activity, with separate Living with COVID funding helping to support periods of peak demand.

We have done more than ever to prepare for this winter, including stress testing winter plans, making sure community teams have the vaccines they need, and identifying the patients who are most vulnerable in winter. We are asking trusts to place a special focus on reducing bed occupancy ahead of Christmas, creating additional capacity, and improving patient flow.

Flu is a recurring pressure that the National Health Service faces every winter. There is particular risk of severe illness for older people, the very young, pregnant, and those with certain underlying health conditions. The flu vaccine remains the best form of defense against influenza, particularly for the most vulnerable, and continues to be highly effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation. This year we have:

- expanded the use of the National Booking Service for flu vaccination;

- carried out a major campaign aimed at eligible people, encouraging them to take up their vaccinations; and

- developed the “flu walk-in finder” so that, from October 2025, patients can easily look up when they can walk into a community pharmacy to get a vaccination.