The latest test of the Government’s national emergency alert system will take place on Sunday, with millions of phone users in the UK receiving the message.
The Government says its system, which uses mobile phone masts to send information to users in targeted areas, plays “a critical role in making sure that we are ready for all kinds of future emergencies”.
Sunday’s alert is scheduled to take place at 3pm.
The alert will be in the form of a 10-second siren sound with accompanying phone vibration.
The alert will be accompanied by a text message reading:
“This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a UK government service that will warn you if there’s a life-threatening emergency nearby.
“You do not need to take any action. In a real emergency, follow the instructions in the alert to keep yourself and others safe.
“Find simple and effective advice on how to prepare for emergencies at gov.uk/prepare.
“Visit gov.uk/alerts for more information or to view this message in Welsh. Ewch i gov.uk/alerts am ragor o wybodaeth neu i weld y neges hon yn y Gymraeg.”
Will everyone in the UK get the alert?
The alert is being sent to all smartphones on the UK’s 4G and 5G networks, even if not connected to mobile data or wi-fi.
There are an estimated 87 million mobile phones in the UK, and the Government says about 95 per cent of the population has 4G or 5G access.
Older phones, and those connected to 2G or 3G networks, will not receive the message.
The alert will come through even if the phone is in silent mode, but phones in airplane mode or that are switched off will not receive it.
It is possible to opt out of the alerts, but the Government strongly recommends keeping them enabled in case of a genuine emergency.
To switch them off, search “emergency alerts” in your phone’s settings menu and turn off “severe alerts” and “extreme alerts”.
Before the 2023 test, domestic abuse charities warned that the alert system could alert an abuser to the existence of a secret phone.
The National Centre for Domestic Violence advised anyone with a hidden phone to make sure they were turned off well in advance of the scheduled test time – this advice is repeated for the test on Sunday.
What went wrong during the 2023 test alert?
While Sunday’s test alert is scheduled for 3pm, some phone users in 2023 got the alert before the scheduled time, while others got it later.
The Government later said that around seven per cent of compatible devices had not received the alert.
Many phones on the Three network did not get the alert at all, and some users on other networks didn’t receive it, with others receiving multiple iterations of the same message.
The problem was fixed before the system was used to alert people to genuine emergencies.
When has the emergency alert been used for real?
Millions of phones received an emergency alert ahead of Storm Eowyn in January (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty)Five alerts have been sent since the system was established, most recently in January, when around 4.5 million phones in Scotland and Northern Ireland were alerted before Storm Eowyn.
Around three million people were alerted in England and Wales during Storm Darragh in December, and the alert was used to evacuate more than 10,000 residents in Plymouth while an unexploded bomb was removed and taken out to sea for detonation.
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