Government Legal Department 2026-27 plan explained

Government lawyers do not usually feature in the public’s picture of how change happens. We tend to notice ministers, campaigners and big votes in Parliament first. But the Government Legal Department’s Business Plan 2026-27 is a reminder that nearly every major policy also needs legal drafting, advice and testing before it can affect daily life. According to GLD’s plan, its 3,900 lawyers and legal professionals will spend this year supporting legislation and government priorities that reach into work, housing, transport, energy, mental health and international trade. Published alongside the department’s Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26, the plan gives you a useful civics lesson: government promises only become durable when someone turns them into rules that can stand up in law.

That helps explain why Treasury Solicitor and Permanent Secretary Douglas Wilson says the department serves the elected government while also protecting the rule of law. Those two jobs matter together. Ministers decide the policy direction; government lawyers help check whether it is lawful, workable and clear enough to put into practice. **What this means:** GLD is not there to make political choices for ministers. Its job is to make sure those choices are framed properly, defended properly and carried through properly. If you have ever wondered who writes the legal bones of a bill, or who helps departments avoid obvious legal mistakes, this is a large part of the answer.

The plan places heavy weight on the Employment Rights Act 2025, which GLD describes as one of the biggest shifts in employment law for decades. The work touches workers’ rights, trade union recognition and fair pay, and it also includes helping the Civil Service prepare for the rules it will have to follow itself. That detail matters because a law is only the beginning; departments then need guidance, systems and decisions that match the new standard. Housing is another major front. GLD says it will support the government’s target of building 1.5 million new homes, while also advising on the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill. That bill would make commonhold the default tenure for new flats and ban the creation of new leasehold flats. **What this means:** this is not just technical property language. It could change how future homeowners own flats and how renters experience security and fairness.

The department’s brief is even wider than jobs and housing. GLD says it will support the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, the Financial Services Bill and the Railways Bill, which is meant to create Great British Railways as a new coordinating body. It is also advising on the Victims and Courts Bill, the implementation of the Mental Health Act 2025 and the legal work needed to finalise the US/UK Economic Prosperity Deal. For readers trying to understand the machinery of government, this spread is the story. One legal department is being asked to work across cyber regulation, crypto markets, sentencing, transport reform and international agreements at the same time. **What this means:** when governments promise change on several fronts at once, the legal workload grows quickly, and delays in that work can slow everything else down.

Another part of the plan is about where the Civil Service works from. GLD says staff based outside London increased by 22% over the past year, with Leeds, Manchester and Bristol all growing. In 2026-27, the department says it will place more senior staff outside the capital, publish quarterly updates on its geographic spread and move its Bristol office to a new city-centre site. That may sound like an internal management detail, but it has a public angle too. **What this means:** where government jobs sit affects who can apply, who gets promoted and which places feel close to national decision-making. Moving senior roles beyond London can widen access to public service careers, though the real test will be whether influence moves with the jobs.

The business plan also shows a department trying to change how its own work is organised. GLD says it will create new roles so lawyers can spend more time on the most complex and high-value cases, replace its existing case management system with a more modern platform and invest in early talent and new career routes into the profession. For younger readers, that final point is worth pausing on. Government law is not only for people who followed a straight line into elite institutions. When a department talks about wider entry routes, it is also talking about who gets to help shape the state. GLD’s litigation teams have held the Law Society’s Lexcel quality mark since 2006, and the department says its staff engagement index reached 65% in 2025-26, up six points since 2022 and level with the Civil Service average.

This year is the final one in GLD’s 2024-27 strategy, so the 2026-27 plan reads partly as a to-do list and partly as a public benchmark. If you want to judge whether it succeeds, do not just watch for press releases. Watch whether the Employment Rights Act is implemented cleanly, whether housing reform moves from promise to practice and whether new systems actually make public legal work quicker and clearer. The quieter lesson is the most useful one. In public life, law is not an afterthought added once politicians have finished speaking. It is one of the main ways policy becomes real. GLD’s plan matters because it shows the unseen work that sits between a government announcement and the rules that reach your job, your home, your train and your rights.