Latest news & events

ADEPT's Strategic Plan 2026-29 - Making better places for people - was launched in May 2026 and sets out our priorities and ambitions for the next three years. Building on the previous Strategic Plan, it celebrates some of our key achievements and outlines the main changes and challenges that we must address. The plan sets out our values as an organisation - the core beliefs and principles that underpin and guide the way that we operate and behave.

The plan reflects the significant changes and challenges facing local government right now, from the ongoing implementation of devolution and local government reorganisation, to the growing impacts of climate change, rapid advances in digital technology and AI and continuing financial pressures on councils. Against this backdrop, ADEPT's role as the voice of local authority place directors has never been more important.

Our six strategic priorities for 2026-29 are: 

1. Building resilient places.
2. Leading decarbonisation and nature recovery at a local level.
3. Enabling healthy, inclusive and cohesive communities.
4. Supporting the delivery of effective devolution and successful local government reorganisation.
5. Developing the place director of the future and the wider workforce.
6. Improving our membership offer.

Underpinning everything we do are our four core values - collaboration, influence, innovation and inclusion. These reflect the culture we want to sustain, the way we work with one another and how we build relationships with our members, partners and government.

As we mark 140 years of place-based leadership since the first meeting of the County Surveyors' Society in 1885, this plan sets out an ambitious and optimistic vision for what ADEPT and its members can achieve together.

You can read the Strategic Plan here.