A ninety-day corporate communications cycle that promises no launch

Ninety days is a planning container, not evidence that an organisation needs that long or will be ready at the end. This guide uses Cedar Vale Engineering Ltd, a fictional manufacturer considering consolidation of one customer-support site into another England site. Every exercise uses fictional copy and synthetic records. Nothing is sent or implemented.

The method and sources were checked on 6 September 2026.

Days 1 to 15: admit the decision

Write one decision statement, the English location, options including no external message, confirmed facts and unresolved assumptions. Assign the proposal owner separately from the communications lead. List employees, customers, suppliers, communities, investors or lenders, journalists, regulators and internal approvers only where their relationship is evidenced.

The first gate asks whether communication planning would prejudice an open employee process. Acas calls consultation a genuine two-way discussion and notes that specific requirements may apply. The employment reviewer marks pass, fail or unresolved. An unresolved result stops public-copy approval.

Days 16 to 30: inspect evidence and counter-signals

For each proposed statement, attach an evidence ID, owner, period, limitation and expiry date. Add a counter-signal that would weaken it. Interview and survey plans remain separate from consultation and direct marketing; this exercise recruits nobody.

Map any personal data by source, purpose, fields, access, objection, suppression and deletion. The ICO's data-minimisation guidance says UK GDPR data should be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary. Because the page notes current review, the privacy owner records a publication-day recheck.

Days 31 to 50: build non-live content routes

Draft separate fictional artefacts for an employee discussion, customer service notice, supplier note, owned public statement and media response. Do not combine investor or regulator communication unless a qualified owner confirms the route applies. Mark what Cedar Vale controls and where an independent recipient decides what happens next.

Test plain language, keyboard navigation, headings and a request for an alternative format. GOV.UK's accessible communication formats guidance is intended for government communicators, but its prompts on involving disabled people and considering alternatives can inform the exercise. Cedar Vale still needs fact-specific accessibility and equality review.

Days 51 to 70: exercise hand-offs and rollback

Use a synthetic recipient list and a harmless fictional source-copy version. Test that only authorised roles can approve, distribute, pause, correct and restore it. Record expected event, actual observation, tester role, timestamp and evidence location. Do not send dummy news to journalists or infer audience behaviour.

Insert a fictional wrong date. Check whether the team can find every controlled copy, issue a replacement and retain the correction record. Run a tabletop cyber scenario in which an unauthorised draft appears externally. The NCSC's incident communication guidance supports planning and coordination in a cyber incident; it does not certify this exercise or replace Cedar Vale's incident command.

Days 71 to 85: review independent gates

Factual authority, employee process, privacy and PECR, accessibility, advertising, market disclosure, security, finance and corporate approval each receive their own status. An advertising claim, if present, also needs evidence under the CAP Code's substantiation rule within its remit. A pass elsewhere cannot compensate for a failure.

Record buyer-owned cost, capacity and service thresholds as blanks until evidence exists. Stop if a source fact changes, an affected group lacks a usable route, a channel cannot correct content, or an escalation owner is unavailable.

Days 86 to 90: make a bounded decision

The accountable owner chooses proceed within scope, narrow, rework or stop. The evidence pack includes the decision record, population register, approved fictional artefacts, test observations, counter-signals, specialist statuses, correction route and next review date. A proceed decision authorises only the defined next step, not a site consolidation or public launch.

This draft remains on publication hold. Before any real use, named specialists must revisit their gates, the organisation must replace fictional inputs with authorised records, and the fact-checker must reopen each time-sensitive source. If those conditions are not met, the only defensible result at day 90 is hold.