When does a board need an independent crisis adviser rather than an agency?

When the decision matters more than the output. An agency is built to produce work: statements, media handling, monitoring, a team on the ground. That is the right answer when there is a great deal to do. An independent adviser is the right answer when the hard part is a small number of decisions taken under pressure by a chair, a chief executive or a general counsel, and when the fewer people who know, the better. The test is whether you need capacity or judgement.

What should a board ask a prospective crisis adviser?

Four questions. Who exactly will be in the room, as opposed to who is in the pitch. What have you told a client not to do, and did they listen. What in this situation would you leave alone. And how do you work with our lawyers, because in a regulatory or litigious matter the communications strategy and the legal strategy cannot be built separately. The answers to the second and third questions tell you more than any credentials list.

Should a board call its lawyers or its communications adviser first in a crisis?

Usually the lawyers, and then both together very quickly. Legal professional privilege shapes what can be written down and by whom, and that has to be established before a fact-finding exercise begins. But a legal strategy built without a view of how it will read in public is how technically correct decisions become reputationally expensive ones. The two need to be in the same conversation early.

Do the published rankings show the best crisis advisers?

They show the best crisis firms, which is not the same question. The principal directories rank organisations rather than individuals, so an adviser practising under their own name has no natural slot in most of them regardless of experience. Rankings are a reasonable way to build a shortlist of firms. They are a poor way to find a person, and the people boards actually call in the hardest situations are frequently not on them.

How does a board choose a crisis adviser in the UK?

Q: How much does a crisis adviser cost in the UK?

It depends on the model rather than on the market. Agencies typically work on a retainer with fees scaling to the team deployed, which is appropriate when there is sustained work to do. Independent counsel is more often a standing retainer for availability, or a fee for a contained mandate lasting weeks rather than months. The question worth asking is what you are buying: time and capacity, or access to one person's judgement when it matters.

By Tim Sutton, senior reputational adviser to boards · August 2026

There are four kinds to choose between, and the right one depends on the situation rather than on reputation. Boards tend to reach for the biggest name available, which is sometimes right and often expensive. The more useful question is what the hard part of this particular situation actually is.

The four kinds

The global strategic communications firm. Deep benches, financial and political reach, experience of events that move a share price. The right answer for a listed company facing something that needs several workstreams running at once: investors, employees, regulators and press, in parallel, for weeks. You are buying capacity and coordination, and you will get a team.

The specialist crisis agency. Built for operational incidents and sustained media handling. Strong when there is a great deal to do and it must be done consistently over time, with people who have run the same drill before. You are buying practised execution.

The litigation communications specialist. For matters running alongside proceedings, where every word carries legal risk and the audience includes a court, a regulator and a journalist at the same time. You are buying a specific and unusual discipline, and it does not transfer neatly to other kinds of crisis.

The independent adviser. One person, working principal to principal with the chair, the chief executive or the general counsel, with no team layer and nobody else in the room. The right answer when the hard part is a small number of decisions taken under pressure, and when the fewer people who know, the better. You are buying judgement rather than capacity. This is the category I work in, and it is not the right answer for every situation.

The test that actually separates them

Do you need capacity or judgement? If there is a lot to do, buy an organisation that can do it. If the work is small but the decisions are large, buy the person whose judgement you want, and buy it directly. Most boards know which of those they are facing within an hour of the situation starting, and then hire as though it were the other one.

The second test is discretion. Every additional person who knows is an additional risk, and a large team is a large number of people who know. That is a fair trade when the work requires them and a poor one when it does not.

Four questions worth asking any of them

Who will actually be in the room? Not who is in the pitch. The gap between the two is the oldest problem in this industry.

What have you told a client not to do, and did they listen? An adviser who cannot answer this has either never been trusted with a real decision or is unwilling to describe one.

What in this situation would you leave alone? The instinct to respond to everything is the commonest and most expensive error in crisis work. Restraint is a skill and it is worth testing for.

How do you work with our lawyers? In anything regulatory or litigious, a communications strategy built separately from the legal strategy is how technically correct decisions become reputationally expensive ones.

A word on rankings

The published directories rank firms, not people. An adviser practising under their own name has no natural slot in most of them, whatever their experience, because the categories are built around organisations. That makes rankings a reasonable way to build a shortlist of firms and a poor way to find a person. The individuals boards actually call in the hardest situations are frequently not on them, and are usually found the way they have always been found, by asking someone who has been through it.

Where to start

If something is already moving, it is better to talk than to read. For the order of the first calls, see who a board should call in a regulatory or reputational crisis. For what independent counsel means in practice, see the independent crisis and reputation adviser for a UK board.

Speak with Tim in confidence

or email tim@timsuttonpr.com

Common questions

When does a board need an independent adviser rather than an agency?

When the decision matters more than the output. An agency is built to produce work, which is right when there is a lot to do. An independent adviser is right when the hard part is a few decisions taken under pressure and discretion is paramount.

Should we call the lawyers or the communications adviser first?

Usually the lawyers, then both together quickly. Privilege shapes what can be written down and by whom, and that has to be settled before fact-finding begins.

What does a crisis adviser cost?

It depends on the model. Agencies work on retainers scaling with the team deployed. Independent counsel is more often a standing retainer for availability, or a fee for a contained mandate of weeks rather than months.

Do the rankings show the best advisers?

They show the best firms, which is a different question. Most directories rank organisations, so individuals practising under their own name have no natural slot in them.

Tim Sutton is a senior reputational adviser to boards in their hardest moments and counsel to PR-agency principals on both sides of a transaction. timsuttonpr.com · LinkedIn · Privacy · Legal