How to build a public affairs strategy

A public affairs strategy sets out what your organisation needs from government, who can deliver it and how you will get it to them. A change in the law, a line in a Budget or a new regulator’s rule can make or cost an organisation millions, and a clear strategy is how you see that coming and act on it. There is no single template that fits every organisation, but the strategies that work share the same parts.

This guide takes each part in turn, from the objective to the Treasury timetable and the rules on lobbying, and ends with a one-page template and a worked example. It suits a team writing its first strategy as well as one rebuilding a plan that has drifted.

The short version

• Start with the decision you need: what, from whom and by when.
• Work out how that decision is made: in the department, at the Treasury, through both Houses or in a devolved government, and who shapes it at each step.
• Map everyone who matters by influence and position, and decide whose position you need to move.
• Give each a reason to act that fits their priorities, with evidence and a constituency angle.
• Plan around the year: the Budget, the Spending Review, the session, recesses, conference season and elections.
• Track the issue and your engagement, so you know when it moves and what the team has done.
• Measure outcomes as well as activity, and review the plan on a fixed rhythm.
• Fit it on one page, so leadership can read it and the team can run it.

Start with clear objectives

Agree the objectives before you plan anything else. A useful objective names the decision you need, who makes it and when.

Be realistic about the government’s appetite. After a major reform in an area, ministers rarely want to reopen it, and a period of building relationships may serve you better than a fresh push for change.

• Separate the goal from the ask. The goal is the outcome your organisation needs. The ask is the specific thing you put to government, in one sentence.
• Set a fallback. Decide in advance what you would accept instead: a pilot, a review, a consultation or a smaller sum.
• Prioritise. Two or three objectives a year is plenty for most teams. Write down what you won’t pursue, too.
• Get sign-off. The chief executive and board should agree the objectives, because they will spend time and reputation on them.

Work out who decides

Many strategies start with a list of MPs. Trace how the decision gets made first, because that tells you who matters and when.

A few features of the system shape almost every strategy:

• Officials draft the options. The policy team writes the advice a minister chooses from, so bring officials with you before you go to the minister’s office, and don’t go round them.
• Money goes through the Treasury. Departments spend within settlements agreed at Spending Reviews, now held every two years, with the next due in 2027. Anything new needs the department to find room in its budget or to win the argument with the Treasury before a fiscal event. Your case has to be with the department in time for that argument, which is months before the Budget itself.
• The Lords revises. The government has a large Commons majority, but no party has a majority in the Lords, where crossbenchers sit with none and much of a bill’s line-by-line scrutiny happens. On a bill that matters to you, the peers who lead on it can matter as much as the minister, and government concessions often come at Lords report stage.
• Secondary legislation is settled early. Statutory instruments can be approved or rejected but not amended, so the consultation before one is laid is your real chance to change it.
• Devolution splits the map. Health, education, housing, planning and much of transport are decided in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast for their nations, so the same issue can need four strategies on four timetables. When Westminster legislates on a devolved matter, it normally seeks the devolved legislature’s consent, which can open a second front.

Identify key stakeholders

With the decision path in front of you, list everyone who makes or shapes the decision. That usually includes:

• The secretary of state and the minister who holds your brief, their special advisers and their private office
• The policy team and, for legislation, the bill team
• The Treasury spending team that covers the department, reached through the department rather than directly
• Shadow ministers and the other parties’ spokespeople
• The chair and members of the select committee that shadows the department
• Peers who speak on the issue, including crossbenchers
• Backbench MPs who raise it, or whose constituencies it affects, and any active all-party parliamentary group
• Ministers, MSPs, Members of the Senedd or MLAs, where the decision is devolved
• Trade bodies, unions, charities, think tanks and other businesses, as allies or opponents

Focus on the people with most influence now, but keep the opposition close too: a strategy that only works for the current government won’t outlast the next reshuffle, let alone an election.

Special advisers matter as much as ministers. A secretary of state sees a great many organisations, and the spad who covers your issue shapes what reaches them and how. If the minister’s diary is closed, the right adviser or official is often worth more. Our public affairs roadmap covers building those relationships between asks.

Identify their positions

Next, find out where each stakeholder stands. Sort each into one of four:

• No position: they haven’t said anything clear on your issue.
• Detractor: they oppose your position.
• Neutral: they are neither for nor against.
• Supporter: they back your position.

Then note each one’s influence over the decision, high, medium or low, and decide whose position you need to move and where to. A high-influence stakeholder with no position is usually where your time goes furthest. A low-influence detractor rarely is.

Base each position on evidence: what they have said in debates, oral and written questions and committee evidence sessions (all in Hansard), committee reports, maiden speeches, manifestos, their posts and what they have said to you. Note the source and date beside each position, so the team can see how current it is. Our guide to political intelligence covers the sources and a weekly routine for keeping positions current.

Map your opponents too: who will argue against your ask, to whom and with what evidence. Prepare your answer to their strongest point before you need it.

Develop key messages

Fit your messages to each stakeholder’s priorities. Explain why your issue matters to them and why it should come before the other claims on their time. Put numbers on your organisation’s impact, and connect it to what they have said they want.

A message that works usually has four parts:

• The ask: one sentence, specific enough to say yes to.
• Why it matters: three reasons at most, each with its evidence.
• Why it matters to them: how it advances something the government, the minister or the MP has said they want, in their own words from Hansard or their announcements.
• What it costs: if the ask costs money, how much, over how many years, and what it saves. The Treasury will ask; give the department figures it can check.

Constituency evidence carries weight with every MP: the jobs, sites, members, clients or patients in their seat. GovConnex Maps takes a spreadsheet of addresses or postcodes and shows the Westminster constituency of each.

Write it down once, as a one-page note to leave behind after every meeting: our guide to writing a briefing note shows how. Prepare for the questions you would rather not be asked, too: what it costs, who opposes it and why now.

Plan engagement

Plan how you will engage each stakeholder, through a mix of letters, meetings, evidence and events.

• Letters and emails open the door and put your ask on the record. See our checklist for writing to MPs.
• Meetings move positions. Bring one ask and leave a one-page note. See our guide to meeting MPs and ministers.
• Consultation responses, Budget representations and evidence to select committees and public bill committees put your case on the record, and strong written evidence can lead to an invitation to give it in person.
• Site visits on Fridays and in recess, when MPs are in their constituencies, show the issue rather than describe it.
• Conference season, APPG meetings and sector events keep you in touch between asks.
• Coalitions show breadth of support. One letter signed by five organisations carries more weight than five separate ones.
• Media and public campaigns raise the political cost or benefit of a decision. Use them deliberately: going public can close doors that private engagement would have opened.

Sequence the plan. Work with officials before the minister’s office, and the minister’s office before the minister. Build support on the backbenches before you escalate, and brief the opposition and the peers who lead on a bill before it reaches the Lords. Going over the department’s head to No 10, or to a First Minister’s office, is a last resort, and it’s remembered.

Decide who does what: who owns each relationship, which meetings need your chief executive and which the policy team can hold. The chief executive’s time is usually the scarcest resource in the plan.

Plan around the year

Timing matters as much as the message: a strong ask that arrives after the decision is made achieves nothing. These are the fixed points of the year at Westminster:

• Sitting weeks and recesses. The Commons usually sits Monday to Thursday, and on some Fridays for private members’ bills. Recess dates are published on the Parliament website once they are announced. Avoid asking for time on a department’s oral questions day, at Prime Minister’s Questions, just before a fiscal event or during a political crisis.
• Pre-election periods. Once an election is called, ministers keep governing but hold back decisions a new government might want to take differently, along with big or contentious contracts and sensitive appointments. The Cabinet Office issues guidance before general, devolved and local elections, and the devolved governments and councils follow their own. Get the decisions you need beforehand, or seek commitments from the parties and candidates during the campaign.
• The devolved nations run their own budgets, parliamentary timetables and elections.

Track your issues and your engagement

Track mentions of your issues in debates, written questions, committee evidence, government announcements and what MPs post, so you know when an issue moves and what key stakeholders are saying. A political monitoring service can do this for you; our guide to choosing one covers what to look for.

Follow the formal steps too. Keep a tracker of each bill, inquiry, consultation and statutory instrument you follow, with your position (support, support with amendments, oppose or monitoring), an owner and the next deadline, so nothing slips between people.

Keep a record of every engagement: who you met, what was said, what you promised and what they asked for. A shared record means anyone on the team can pick up a relationship, and it is what your reporting is built from. Our guide to public affairs CRMs covers what that record should hold.

Measure what the work achieves

Measure at three levels, and report them side by side:

Keep the team’s contribution and the political outcome distinct. Governments decide for many reasons, and a run of meetings followed by a policy change doesn’t prove one caused the other. Report what the team did, what moved and what government decided, and say plainly what you think made the difference.

Set the measures when you write the strategy, not when you write the report.

Review and refine

Review the strategy regularly, and refine it as the issue evolves. A rhythm that suits many teams:

• Weekly in sitting weeks: what moved, what’s due and who needs a call.
• Monthly: update the stakeholder map and positions.
• Quarterly: check progress against the objectives, and report to leadership.
• After a big moment: a Budget, a reshuffle, an election or a new secretary of state calls for a fresh look at the whole plan.

Stay within the rules

• Consultant lobbyists must register. Anyone paid to communicate with a minister or permanent secretary on a client’s behalf must be on the Register of Consultant Lobbyists before they start. Check an agency’s registration before you hire it.
• In-house teams don’t register at Westminster. The register doesn’t cover organisations lobbying for themselves. Scotland is different: under the Lobbying (Scotland) Act 2016, an organisation whose paid staff lobby MSPs, Scottish ministers, special advisers or the Permanent Secretary in person or by video must register and report it, in-house teams included.
• Foreign influence is registered separately. Work done at the direction of a foreign power may need registering under the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.
• Expect to be on the record. Departments publish ministers’ meetings with outside organisations every quarter, and correspondence can be requested under freedom of information.
• Be accurate. An office that is given wrong information once will check everything you say afterwards. If you get something wrong, correct it quickly.

Our public affairs roadmap covers the other rules, including the limits on former ministers and officials and the rules on political donations.

A one-page template

Copy this outline and fill it in for each objective:

• Objective: the decision you need, from whom, by when.
• The ask: one sentence, specific enough to say yes to.
• Fallback: what you would accept instead.
• Decision path: how the decision gets made, and the dates that matter.
• Stakeholders: who decides and who influences, with their influence, their position now and the position you need.
• Messages: your three reasons, the evidence for each and the constituency angle.
• Engagement plan: who you will engage, how and when, and who owns each relationship.
• Allies and opponents: who will support you, who will argue against you and what they will say.
• Risks: what could knock the plan off course, and what you would do.
• Resources: the team, the chief executive’s time and the budget.
• Measures: activity, influence and outcome, set now.
• Review dates: when you will check progress and update the plan.

Worked example: a Budget ask

Here is the template filled in for a fictional membership body, the Rural Care Network, which represents 60 care providers in rural England. Its Rural Nursing Placements scheme, also fictional, funds 500 newly qualified nurses a year in rural care homes and ends in March 2028. Social care is devolved, so the ask is to the Department of Health and Social Care, for England.

Objective. The scheme extended for three years from April 2028, confirmed at the autumn 2027 Budget.

The ask. “Extend the Rural Nursing Placements scheme for three years, at its current £30 million a year.”

Fallback. A one-year extension while the department evaluates the scheme.

Decision path. The department would make the case to the Treasury over the summer of 2027, as part of its Budget discussions or its bid in the 2027 Spending Review. Budget representations usually close in September. So the policy team and the minister’s office need the Network’s case before the summer recess.

Messages.

• 500 nurses a year, and 7 in 10 still working in rural care two years later, from the Network’s survey of its members.
• A placement costs less than the agency staff a home would otherwise hire.
• The scheme supports the social care workforce priorities ministers have set out in Parliament.
• Locally: member homes in 23 constituencies, with the placements in each.

Stakeholders.

Engagement plan.

• January to March 2027: brief the policy team and meet the spad. Invite the 23 local MPs to visit a member home. Ask one to table a written question on rural care staffing.
• April to June 2027: the chief executive meets the minister with the latest retention figures. Ask the MPs who visited to raise it with ministers. Ask the nursing and care workforce bodies to back the case in writing.
• July to September 2027: send the Budget representation, with costings the department can check, and see ministers and spads at party conference.
• October to November 2027: no public campaign while the decision is being made. Statements ready for Budget day for each outcome: the extension, the fallback, or neither, with the plan for next year.

Allies and opponents. Allies are the nursing and care workforce bodies, rural councils and two integrated care boards. No one opposes the scheme outright; the competition is every other claim on the department’s budget.

Risks. Spending pressure in the department: show the agency costs the scheme avoids. A reshuffle: the officials’ support carries over to a new minister, so build it early. A late evaluation: share the Network’s own data now.

Resources. The policy director owns the plan. The chief executive gives four meetings. The budget covers the survey and travel to Westminster and conference.

Measures. Activity: the representation sent by the September deadline, and everyone on the map engaged by June. Influence: the spad and the policy team supportive by Easter, and the minister’s office asking for the costing by summer. Outcome: the scheme extended at the Budget, or the fallback secured.

Review dates. Monthly at the executive meeting, and a full review after the Budget.

Common questions

What should a public affairs strategy include? The objective and the specific ask, how the decision gets made, who decides and influences it and where they stand, your messages and evidence, an engagement plan timed to the parliamentary and fiscal year, the risks, who owns the work and how you will measure progress.

Is there a template for a public affairs strategy? Yes. The one-page template above has a line for each part, from the objective and the ask to the measures and review dates. Copy it for each objective; the worked example shows one filled in for a Budget ask.

How do you measure public affairs? Measure activity (meetings held, evidence and representations submitted), influence (positions moved, invitations to give evidence) and outcomes (what government decided), and report them side by side. Set the measures when you write the strategy, not at the end of the quarter.

How often should a public affairs strategy be reviewed? Many teams check what moved each sitting week, update the stakeholder map monthly and report progress each quarter. A Budget, a reshuffle, an election or a new secretary of state calls for a fresh look at the whole plan.

Do in-house public affairs teams need to register as lobbyists? Not at Westminster, where only consultant lobbyists who contact ministers or permanent secretaries for clients must register. In Scotland, in-house teams whose paid staff lobby MSPs or Scottish ministers in person must register too.