Responsible Procurement vision

Our people

To provide sustained employment opportunities and improve standards of living

Responsible procurement can make a contribution to achieving the strategy’s aims of improving London’s competitiveness, transforming to a low-carbon economy, and investing in London’s future. For example, our experience of using procurement to drive apprenticeship opportunities will be valuable when pursuing the strategy’s goal of improving the skills of London’s workforce. Each part of the group is already taking steps to introduce apprenticeships in their own organisations and in their supply chains.

Skills and employment

In July 2008, the Mayor launched London's Future: The Skills and Employment Strategy for London 2008 – 2013, which sets out a blueprint for the changes required to improve employment and skills outcomes for Londoners and London employers over the next five years. The LSEB is chaired by the Mayor of London and is employer-led to ensure that its work is driven by the needs of employers and that skills provision meets the existing and future needs of the London workforce.

‘The GLA Group group, which employs 1 in 50 Londoners, also has a role to play. As an employer, through procurement and using major investment projects, in particular the Olympics and Crossrail, the GLA Group should lead by example in skills and employment practices. I want the GLA Group to make opportunities for training and employment available to young people not in education, employment or training and to ex-offenders as well as increasing the number of Apprenticeship places’
Mayor of London Boris Johnson, foreword London’s Future, July 2008

The strategy outlined the 3 strategic aims; working with employers to better support them in providing more job and skills opportunities to Londoners, supporting Londoners to improve their skills and to create a fully integrated, customer-focused skills and employment system.
Procurement was recognised as being a key driver to deliver skills and employment opportunities in London. The GLA Group have a target to implement 1,000 apprenticeships within their organisations and their supply chains per annum.

TfL skills and Employment Strategy

The London Living Wage

The London Living Wage (LLW), introduced in 2005, seeks to ensure that those in low-paid jobs are paid a wage that helps ensure work pays by taking account of the capital’s high living costs. At least 29 organisations across London, including the GLA Group group, have implemented the LLW since its launch.

The GLA Group can confirm that all GLA Group employees working on GLA Group premises are paid at or above the LLW. This has amounted to more than 2,200 low-paid workers across London having had their wages uplifted to the LLW rate.

Promoting supplier diversity

We have encouraged our key suppliers to promote diversity in their own workforces and in their supply chains.

Sixty six GLA Group suppliers have signed up to the Diversity Works for London (DWfL) programme which seeks to help small and large businesses become more representative of the communities they serve. The DWfL online toolkit, which enables suppliers to assess their own performance, guides companies on challenges such as measuring diversity performance against best practice standards and provides possible approaches to meeting diversity and equality goals. Our aim is to increase the number of organisations who make use of the toolkit significantly in the years ahead.