How to write a policy brief

What is a policy brief?

Policy briefs are short documents written to inform non-academic policy audiences of an issue in need of policy attention. They are an effective way to summarise your research and provide evidence and recommendations to policy audiences.

Structure of a policy brief

• Heading: This title should express the aim of your brief. It is best to make it positive and solution-focused, avoiding rhetorical questions.

• Executive summary: This section acts as an introduction and gives context to the problem your recommendations will set out to solve. It should especially highlight severity and scale, which can be effectively demonstrated with statistics. Any references to online journals or reports should be linked directly, as often policy makers don’t have easy library access and speed is essential. This section should be around 300 words.

• Policy recommendations: This section should be set up as key bullet points stating the specific actions you want taken to solve the problem. Each recommendation should be 1-3 lines long (aim for less than 50 words per recommendation). These will be your key 'asks' moving forward and will shape conversations you have with stakeholders. For maximum impact, you should limit your number of recommendations to 6 or less.

• About the research: This section provides background on your research. It can also include further explanation of your policy recommendations, demonstrating how they can solve the problem you identified in the executive summary. If you reiterate key elements of your policy recommendations here, use the order they were listed in as your structure. Include a conclusion, summarising recommendations and need. This section should be around 300 words.

• Contact: Include your name, title, university, email address, and any other useful links (such as your university staff profile).

Steps to writing a policy brief

1. Consider the main problem you’d like to solve, and if policy change is an effective step in instituting the necessary solutions. If so, complete and submit a draft of your brief via our form.
2. Our team will review your form submission, put your brief into a formatted template and send it back to you with suggested changes. You’ll then edit and share changes with the team, until you have a successful written policy brief.
3. If you like, your brief can be added to our Policy Engagement hub. You can then share it to key stakeholders via email or at events.

Tips and tricks

• Be concise and succinct: Aim for around 1000 words total. Your reader is time poor, so use short sentences and be direct.

• So what? Everything you write should answer the question “so what?” Use statistics or quotes from those with lived experiences to illustrate severity and scale of the problem and demonstrate urgency.

• Use accessible language: Keep in mind that your audience are non-experts, and will likely have less than a degree level understanding of your topic. Use layman’s terms, and avoid acronyms and jargon.

• Stay solution-focused: Avoid negative speak or placing blame and focus on presenting solutions to your audience.

Examples

• Our Policy Engagement hub features a variety of policy briefs.

Contact

The team is happy to advise on written policy briefs and any other policy engagement queries you may have.

Dedicated CoSS team:

• Hannah and Nick: H.Bradley.3@bham.ac.uk; n.j.i.brown@bham.ac.uk.