The next general election may seem a long way off, says Peter Riddell, but civil servants and politicians should be preparing now for 2015.

The next UK general election will be very different from anything seen before – and it is not too soon for the civil service and politicians alike to start thinking about how their existing assumptions and conventions will have to change.

As Catherine Haddon and I record in our new Institute for Government report, Transitions: Lessons Learned, the civil service spent a lot of time in the run-up to the 2010 election thinking, speculating and worrying about what might and would change under a new (Conservative) government. All this was on the usual assumption that there would a rapid handover of power between one single-party majority administration and another.

Events turned out differently. We had to wait five days for a new prime minister to be appointed, and we had the first coalition government for 65 years. The system coped, thanks both to the good sense of the main politicians and to well-judged preparatory work by cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell and the top Whitehall team.

However, a good deal of luck was also involved. As senior officials concede, much could have gone wrong. Had half a dozen seats gone a different way, the negotiations could have been more protracted and contentious. Moreover, the civil service was fortunate that its offer to facilitate the negotiations was turned down by the parties. As it was, the provision of factual information on the costs of proposed policies – in particular on in-year spending cuts – was not far from offering advice, and could have risked compromising civil service impartiality if those costings had become a key issue in the negotiations.

There are lessons for the parties, too. The third party needs not only to be taken seriously, but also to take itself seriously. The Liberal Democrats had thought a lot about negotiations but relatively little about preparing their own senior spokesmen for office, or about adjusting their policy commitments to the inevitable compromises of any coalition. Those mistakes will not be made again.

But there will be a more profound difference next time, simply because of the existence of the coalition – reinforced by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. We now know the date of the next election – subject, of course, to override by the Commons if the coalition breaks down and no successor can command a Commons majority. But 2014-15 could be a fraught political year. The existing strains between the coalition partners could become much worse, as the parties will increasingly be competing against each other as well as governing alongside each other.

In most other countries where coalitions are the norm, there are conventions to ensure governing continues (at least on essentials) as election day approaches. In Scotland, during the period before the 2007 election, officials were allowed to provide information to a minister from one coalition party without supplying it to a minister from the other party. Similarly, civil servants played a more active role in post-election negotiations. Senior Whitehall officials are sceptical about whether the Scottish model can be transferred to London without creating controversy.

Nonetheless, pre-election preparations will have to be conducted differently. The conventions on pre-election contacts between opposition parties and permanent secretaries will have to be revised. One or other of the governing parties may be in office after the election, but not necessarily in coalition together. So the civil service should discuss the plans and policies of the main potential participants in government – whether currently in office or in opposition – in a similar way. This will involve delicate relations with governing parties. There may have to be more explicit guidelines.

The main contrast with what happens in other countries is about attitudes and expectations. Where there are proportional systems of election, most participants expect that an election will lead to another coalition rather than a single party government. But in the UK, the coalition is still regarded by many as an exception rather than the rule before majority government is resumed in 2015. That expectation/hope could make the year before the election turbulent.

Regardless of the existence of the coalition, the 2010 experience shows the need for much closer talks between the opposition parties and the civil service before the election, so that politicians understand far better the practical implications of what they want to do, and civil servants can prepare better for a change of administration. It may seem a long way off, but it is not too soon for both politicians and the civil service to start thinking – and talking to each other.

Peter Riddell is a senior fellow of the Institute for Government

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Written by Peter Riddell