The UK Plant Health Risk Register: a tool for prioritizing actions

Following unprecedented publicity concerning pest threats to UK trees in 2012, a review body recommended that a UK Plant Health Risk Register (RR) be developed to assist with the prioritisation of actions to reduce the threats posed by the major pests of plant health importance. The RR that has been developed assigns relative risk ratings to pests according to appropriate scenarios, e.g. introduction for pests that are absent. The ratings were based on rules created to summarise the likelihoods of occurrence and impacts taking into account information on the pests and factors such as their pathways, hosts, distribution, spread and impacts. Expert judgement was used where information is lacking. A score referred to as ‘the value at risk’ was obtained from economic and environmental data to produce risk ratings that reflect the value of the host sector to the UK. Risk ratings in the absence of mitigations (risk management actions) were compared with those that take existing actions into account to identify species that are priorities for additional actions, e.g. to enhance regulation or conduct pest risk analyses. The RR is now used routinely to support decision making and further developments are planned.