Heritage
The Hawkhills estate is the beating heart of the UK Resilience Academy (UKRA), and the Emergency Planning College (EPC) before it.
Discover the history of this impressive site, from its early beginnings as a pre-war Home Office anti-gas school and a cold war civil defence establishment, through to its present day as the main campus for the UKRA.
A beautiful setting
The Hawkhills is sited in part of the Vale of York which became known as the Forest of Galtres, a Royal Forest from the days of the earliest Norman kings of England.
The name ‘Galtres’ is of Scandinavian origin and means ‘boars’ brushwood’. Part of the forest known as the ‘great covert’ was woodland devoted entirely to game, an essential element in the royal economy of the period, and a hunting rest in various forms stood on or near the present site of the Campus from Saxon times before housing development began
The Hawkhills Estate, Easingwold, York
Home Office Anti-Gas School
With WWII looming and the increasing fear of the country being subject to gas attack, the Hawkhills became the second of two Home Office Anti-Gas Schools (later known as the Air Raid Precautions School), the first being at Falfield in Gloucestershire.
The first training course was held in December 1937 and its Commandant from then until 1953 was Commander FH Austen OBE. At the end of WWII, the Hawkhills became a Home Office Police Training School.
A typical classroom at the the Anti-Gas School
Civil Defence School
Following the introduction of the 1948 Civil Defence Act, the Hawkhills then became one of three Civil Defence Schools – the other two being its sister establishment in Falfield and another at Taymouth Castle, Scotland.
Training was centralised at the Hawkhills with the disbandment in 1968 of the Civil Defence Corps and the closing of the other establishments, as well as the Civil Defence Staff College at Sunningdale.
The lecture theatre at the Civil Defence School
Emergency Planning College
Around the end of the Cold War, following a number of serious major incidents such as the Bradford Football Stadium fire, the Lockerbie air disaster and the Hillsborough Football Stadium disaster, the role of the Hawkhills was again changed from preparing for the aftermath of nuclear attack to preparation for peacetime disasters bringing with it the new title of Emergency Planning College.
Machinery of Government changes following the General Election of 2001 found the work of the College being transferred from the Home Office Emergency Planning Division to the Cabinet Office Resilience Directorate.
In 2014 the Emergency Planning College launched a fresh new identity to reflect the expanding services, beyond training to encompass: advisory services, exercise delivery and plan validation, providing ‘critical friend’ support, outsourcing services and partnering.
UK Resilience Academy (UKRA)
Amid a changing risk landscape, involving crises with more complexity, frequency and scale it was announced in December 2022 in the UK Government Resilience Framework that a new UK Resilience Academy would be “built up and out from the Emergency Planning College” by 2025 with the aim to:
- making world class professional training available to all that need it
- deliver a new training and skills pathway to drive professionalism and support all those pursuing a career in resilience
- reinvigorate the National Exercising Programme to test plans, structures and skills
On 28th April 2025, the UK Resilience Academy was officially launched.
Discover the facilities
Information taken from “The History of Easingwold and the Forest of Galtres” by Geoffrey C Cowling MA and from research carried out by Susan Thorn, Hawkhills Historian