How to manage corporate planning during political change: a practical guide from council officer teams

This guide was informed by an LGIU and Local Partnerships “Year in learning” roundtable held in July 2026, which brought together senior council officers involved in managing corporate planning.

This is part of a resource series with Local Partnerships. Read the first edition of this series on Managing an LGR Programme – a practical guide for PMO teams.

Summary

A corporate plan is central to a council’s priority, programme and resource coordination, providing the organisation with stability as political administrations change. 

Many councils in the UK are currently navigating political change, from councils with No Overall Control (NOC) to those holding onto slim majorities. This guide supports Senior Officers in corporate planning processes through this change and its accompanying political volatility. 

Drawing on lived experience from unitary, metropolitan, and city councils across England, it offers practical guidance on how to support Senior Officers and new administrations in understanding existing plans and strategies, and on how to productively align political ambitions and priorities with strategic corporate vision. 

This guide was informed by an LGIU and Local Partnerships “Year in learning” roundtable held in July 2026, which brought together senior council officers involved in managing corporate planning. The key discussion questions for this session were as follows: 

1. How are new members and new administrations supported to understand existing Corporate Plans and Council Strategies?
2. What approaches are you taking to support new members and administrations to influence and adapt corporate plans to their priorities and ambitions?

How are new members and new administrations supported to understand existing Corporate Plans and Strategies?

A consistent theme that emerged from the discussion was that supporting members of a new political administration does not hinge solely on the passive transfer of old policy documents. Rather, it is an active onboarding process through which local government officers immerse new members in a shared understanding of the area’s localised needs and financial constraints before political friction can develop. While circumstances varied across areas, participants identified several common principles for establishing evidence-driven member support during the first steps of a new administration. 

Reviewing party manifestos ahead of elections

Prior to local elections, council officers should proactively read and analyse the party manifestos of all political parties. This proactive review allows officers to prepare the council for a variety of post-election possibilities and priorities:

“Look across the party manifestos…try to harvest as much as we can in terms of, you know, if this group was successful or these groups are successful, what are the political priorities likely to be and prepare for…those eventualities.”

Manifestos are treated less as campaign information in themselves and more as illuminative predictors which can emphasise gaps within a political party’s understanding of the localised terrain. Officers can then cross-pollinate this predictive data from the manifestos with evidence-driven data, which is shaped by a complex and nuanced understanding of the locality and its limitations:

“Bringing together and synthesising the political priorities with the data intelligence…in order that we can then really shape those political priorities into a set of council-wide high-level priorities”  

Comprehensive and intensive induction programmes for new members

Post-election, onboarding programmes are delivered by officers to new members. Examples of programmes discussed by participants include: 

• All-member briefings (including bespoke sessions and some mandatory sessions linked to specific roles)
• Externally facilitated sessions 
• Weekly/fortnightly Leadership meetings as a key point of contact for each Cabinet Member 

Programmes run both in the immediate post-election period and more consistently across the lifetime of new administrations. The former is crucial in quickly disrupting the development of misinformed beliefs. By delivering immediate, aggressive induction programmes to new members, officers can prevent the crystallisation of pre-established biases and misconceptions and the eventual political friction they would create.

“Inductions…like hot-housing dare I say, for the first sort of couple of days so that any kind of misunderstanding that members had about the council…were addressed and corrected before those misconceptions had chance to take hold”

Budget alignment

Rather than simply handing members a fully furnished budget plan, officers collaborate with members, aligning medium-term fiscal plans with political aspirations. Officers directly engage members in a “working out” process, clearly highlighting where the strict political lines are before formal budget voting commences:

“We actually did some Medium Term Financial Planning in the room with them. So, what we were able to see from that was almost what I would describe as the ‘political working out’.”

Types of engagement detailed by participants include:

• Cabinet away days: Senior Council Officer teams and cabinet members meet for four or five hours, collaboratively reviewing and working through fiscal challenges and medium-term financial plans. 
• Small group sessions: Focused less on smaller fiscal details and more on the broader alignment of political goals and strategic budget targets. 
• Scrutiny chairs briefings: Members meet with the heads of scrutiny committees before official meetings to discuss details, helping meetings to run more smoothly.

In addition to preventing the development of the aforementioned political frictions, these engagements also help new members invest in a shared narrative for the area alongside local government officers. Their investment in this narrative can safeguard the locality’s strategic resources and priorities. 

Formal accountability mechanisms

While informal engagements help to establish an initial relationship, councils require more formal accountability mechanisms to cement a new administration’s strategic commitment. 

Formal mechanisms include:

• Annual planning agreements that must be signed and owned directly by portfolio holders rather than officers. These agreements clearly outline what each directorate will deliver, incorporate clear KPI’s, align directly with strategic council plans and are immediately reviewed by scrutiny committees at the start of the democratic cycle. 
• Monthly cross-party forums and steering groups bring council leaders together. These meetings help ensure all groups reach consensus on the council’s main priorities before any decisions are made or votes are taken. 
• New administrations may also utilise Local Government Association (LGA) Corporate Peer Challenges within their first 6 to 12 months. This external resource allows a new administration the opportunity to embed new sets of priorities. 

“The Annual Portfolio Resources Agreement…are owned by the portfolio holders, they’re not owned by officers…it’s her accountability for this is what we’re going to deliver…” 

Formally shifting accountability from officers onto new members forces investment in the council’s priorities and strategic vision, requiring them to position their political ambition within the existing corporate structure.

Taken together, the discussions point towards a number of common features of effective processes and mechanisms in the onboarding of new administrations and their members:

• Pre-election preparation and planning based on predictive analysis
• Evidence-driven, fast-paced introductions
• Collaborative financial planning 
• Shared accountability and investment 
• External reviewing resources

The most compelling message from participants was that new members and administrations could be most effectively supported to understand existing corporate plans and strategies when they were themselves empowered to do so. 

While careful officer intervention is invaluable during the formative years of a new administration, the commitment, and more specifically the understanding, of members in the long-term has to come from their investment in a shared narrative, one that is underpinned by a shared commitment to the upholding of the council’s foundational priorities, programmes and resource base. 

Case studies from Buckinghamshire 

This case study shows how a unitary authority supported new administrations and members to understand their existing corporate plans and strategies. The LGA reports outline the strengths and limitations of both approaches, placing particular emphasis on the need for continuous and targeted onboarding processes. 

Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire Council entered into the LGA Corporate Peer Challenge in 2025. The report found that they delivered an “extensive member induction programme” following the May elections. Yet, the report also noted a lack of consistent training beyond the initial induction period, particularly for key cabinet roles. While swift and extensive initial onboarding is crucial for preventing the crystallisation of misinformed beliefs and biases of new members, a more consistent and at times targeted onboarding process is also vital to support the new administration’s understanding of existing corporate plans and strategies. 

What approaches are you taking to support new members and administrations to influence and adapt the corporate planning and strategy setting process and outcomes to their priorities and ambitions?

A central challenge for councils is reconciling the inevitable structural clash between the immediate, short-term ambitions of new councillors and cabinet members with the council’s and the locality’s strategic corporate strategy and vision. Rather than allowing short-termism to cause disruption, political ambitions and priorities can be embedded in strategic plans and aligned with the area’s strategic priorities. 

A shared intention across councils was the belief in the need for deliberate, 10-15 year plans which outlast the life of traditional 4-year political mandates. 

The central solution – creating strategic “horizons” that transcend electoral cycles

Strategic plans cannot be published as a single event. They must be built and co-produced across communities, organisations and across party lines, lending them enough weight to withstand any counterproductive short-term ambition whilst also taking that ambition into account in a productive way.

Strategic planning is divided into multiple time horizons. Strategic directors may focus on the longer-term 10+ year vision for the locality. On the other hand, other Heads of Service may be more focused on service delivery plans with a 12-24 month horizon. Intentionally fracturing the temporal focus of officers in this way prevents strategic focus from ever being concentrated solely on short-term ambitions.

Participants noted how crucial it is for there to be overall movement towards priorities laid out in strategic plans:

“When we have had changes in administration, the general direction of travel has remained broadly consistent”.

Simultaneously, it is important that the strategic plan is dynamic to prevent stagnation. Participants highlighted the value of having an annually updated, dynamic 3 to 5-year plan which fed into the broader strategic vision. Such a mechanism gives authorities the cover to push long-termism further, with participants disclosing plans which extend as far as 2050. 

Community engagement as a political “anchor”

While strategic plans are highly effective in cutting through political noise, they can only have the authority to do so with a meaningful level of community support, which can act as a strategic leverage. 

Overarching, strategic frameworks, such as 10-15 year plans, are co-produced directly with residents, public health bodies and external partners and are not the sole creative output of local government officers. Providing the broader community with this level of authority works two-fold: making council decisions more effective and acting as a heavy counterweight to the prominence of misinformed or biased political opinions:

“[a strategy] that kind of transcends those electoral cycles and is very much informed by… communities, residents…”

Transitioning to “outcome-led” corporate frameworks

To mitigate the disruption caused by shifting political mandates, councils are adopting more holistic planning structures that prioritise strategic outcomes over the vitality of any individual directorate or department:

“This transformation programme is very much pushing us towards… being more kind of outcome-led and working around those outcomes together…”

Authorities as a whole are now geared towards strategic, localised goals, making them more resistant to political volatility.

Shielding local plans from external strategic political shifts

Wiring a new administration’s political priorities and ambitions is further complicated by the council’s relationship with strategic authorities. Councils do not operate in isolation and understand that political shifts at the regional or strategic authority level can introduce short-term pressures that threaten local stability. Councils have to manage the dynamics between themselves and strategic authorities in order to protect strategic visions.

This involves balancing the needs and priorities of authorities with those of the residents in its locality:

“[to be] aligned into the way of working in the [combined authority] family, but recognising the needs of our residents might be a little bit different…keep the residents at the heart of everything we do”

Lessons learned from Question 2

The responses to this question point towards a number of common approaches taken by different authorities to support the integration of new administrations’ priorities and ambitions with pre-existing corporate strategy:

• A split of different timelines decided at the strategic planning level
• Dynamic short-term plans which feed into strategic visions
• Anchoring of strategic visions via co-production with community members
• “Outcome-led” corporate frameworks
• Balanced relationship with regional and combined authorities 

The most important message from participants is that, while long-termism is clearly a new defining focus, both strategic visions and short-term ambitions can coexist. Through the right management, the short-term priorities and ambitions of new political administrations can operate in a way that is both productive and controlled; not disrupting the growth of strategic strategy but also not being consumed by it. 

Case studies

The following three case studies illustrate different approaches to anchoring strategic corporate strategy against political change, indicating that there is no single formula. All three approaches, however, share common characteristics: co-production of strategies with residents and other members of the local community, and a focus on a solid, shared vision that has a longer shelf life than any individual political administration. 

York

The City of York Council has created four 10-year strategies:

1. ‘Climate Change Strategy (2022-2032)’
2.  ‘Economic Strategy (2022-2032)’
3.  ‘Health and Wellbeing Strategy (2022-2032)’
4.  ‘Anti-Poverty Strategy (2025-2035)’

These strategies sit above council plans, which have a 4-year lifespan. Alongside this, York 2032, a broader 10-year plan was developed through the active “gathering” of “resident, business, partner and stakeholder insight” (York 2032: The 10-year Plan). The City of York Council built the necessary mechanisms to anchor their plan against the volatility that accompanies short-term political cycles. 

Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes Council created a Milton Keynes Strategy for 2050 in January, 2021. The strategy, building on the recommendations outlined in the MK Futures 2050 Commission, created a growth plan defined by “Seven Big Ambitions”. The report argues that strategic strategy will be developed independently from the statutory planning process, as well as being “genuinely owned across residents, councillors, business and government”; providing a large and stable vision to work against the volatility that accompanies political change. 

Stockport

The 2025 One Stockport: One Future is a 15-year strategy extending to 2040, which explicitly builds on the One Stockport Borough Plan launched in March 2021.

A corporate plan sustained through periods of No-overall Control. The plan is centred around “five big things”, each with its own 2025/2030/2035/2040 roadmap and outcomes. 

The Stockport approach is notable for two reasons. First, with 450 residents, businesses, and community organisations contributing to the plan, the political anchoring of this plan builds legitimacy that outlasts political change.  Second, framing the Greater Manchester Combined Authority devolution journey as one of the key delivery approaches