ADD2775 London Climate Ready Partnership – Climate Costs handbook

1.1    This decision requests approval for the London Climate Ready Partnership (LCRP / Partnership) to use £15,000 of the Partnership’s funds to develop and deliver a written output from the recent Climate Costs Forum. The work will be match funded by a £10,000 contribution from Transport for London (TfL). The £15,000 comes from LCRP’s own funds, which the Greater London Authority (GLA) holds on behalf of the LCRP in its role as secretariat to the Partnership. The outputs will take the form of a ‘getting started’ handbook to help organisations begin or accelerate the collection of quantified data on the cost of climate change, specific to their organisation’s assets and operations. This can be used to better inform risk management, business planning and case making.
1.2    The climate has already changed, and organisations are facing impacts on assets, operations, staff and customers. These impacts affect costs, service reliability, and critical processes. Adapting to these impacts is urgently needed. However, many decision makers lack the tools or evidence to factor adaptation into projects and operational design using quantified cost-benefit analysis. Some data exists, but it is sparse and often not relevant to specific organisations, assets, or operations.
1.3    The LCRP ran a Climate Costs Forum in July 2025. It was a full day event involving experts from within and outside the climate space working with around 60 organisations across London representing a wide variety of sectors. The Forum focused on the data that organisations currently collect which helps them monitor and measure the performance of their assets and services. The event then introduced organisations to how they can extract and analyse data on how weather and extreme climate events such as heatwaves and surface water flooding can impact current performance metrics.
1.4    The LCRP now wishes to formalise the outputs of this event into a handbook for use by organisations across London. The handbook will include guidance on:
•    how to extract and analyse data on weather and extreme events and how they impact current performance metrics;
•    how to use climate risk assessments to predict how performance metrics may change over time;
•    categorising spend that contributes to climate adaptation and how this can help build business cases for investing in climate adaptation measures or projects;
•    assessing the effectiveness of adaptation measures and how this can be used to build business cases or general case making.
1.5    The £15,000 funding is from the LCRP’s budget of £42,600. Funds are held by the GLA as the secretariat to the LCRP but is primarily income transferred by the Environment Agency to the GLA when secretariat responsibilities were transferred. This has been supplemented with some income for supporting other projects, such as the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment. DD2109 details the receipt and use of funding for the LCCP from the Environment Agency to the GLA.
 

2.1    The handbook will help organisations implement the changes needed to their internal data collection and reporting processes to enable them to better understand and track the impact of climate related events on their operational performance. TfL estimated that they lost £2m in passenger income from the July 2021 flooding and £8m during the 2022 heatwave by linking data on passenger journeys to a specific climate event, but currently they do not routinely link performance data to weather or climate. The handbook will support organisations like TfL to better understand the data they collect and how it can be used to improve organisational resilience.
2.2    Tracking and linking performance and climate data will help organisations better plan for impacts and understand the costs to their businesses. This will support organisations to build business cases for investment in climate resilience.
2.3    Organisations which will benefit from this guidance include major infrastructure providers, local authorities, health and social care providers, holders of significant built environment assets including culture and sport sector.
2.4    The handbook will establish principles and processes to help users answer the following questions:
•    what impact does extreme weather have on organisational performance metrics?
•    how much does the organisation spend on adaptation and resilience (characterisation of spend)?
•    how effective is that spend at improving adaptation and resilience?
•    what is an acceptable level of climate risk?
•    what is the gap between current levels of spend to manage climate risk, and the level of spend needed to manage climate risk to that acceptable level?
 

3.1    The public sector equality duty requires the identification and evaluation of the likely potential impacts, both positive and negative, of the decision on those with protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, sex, marriage/civil partnership status, race, gender, religion or belief, sexual orientation) and set out how you are addressing the duties.

3.2    Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the Mayor and GLA are subject to the public sector equality duty and must have due regard to the need to:
•    eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
•    advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not;
•    foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.
3.3    The “protected characteristics” are age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and marriage/civil partnership status. The duty involves having appropriate regard to these matters as they apply in the circumstances, including having regard to the need to:
•    remove or minimise any disadvantage suffered by those who share or are connected to a protected characteristic;
•    take steps to meet the different needs of such people;
•    encourage them to participate in public life or in any other activity where their participation is disproportionately low.
This can involve treating people with a protected characteristic more favourably than those without one.
3.4    Climate impacts are felt unequally across London, with poorer, disadvantaged communities often living in conditions that magnify the impact of climate change. Those living in housing with poor access to good-quality open space, adequate ventilation or poor levels of insulation can suffer disproportionately from the effects of extreme heat; be at higher risk from flooding; and be less able to take necessary action to reduce their risks. The GLA has developed Climate Vulnerability maps that help assess these risks against social demographic data to help identify parts of London which are most vulnerable. This will feed into the data and metrics that will help support organisations assess exposure and vulnerability.
3.5    Climate impacts can also be felt disproportionately amongst people with protected characteristics, and there is a high level of intersection across impacts. Older or pregnant women, and very young children, are more likely to suffer from the effects of extreme heat. Londoners with a disability are less likely to be able to take action to protect themselves against flash flooding. Those with underlying health conditions are at risk from increased mortality due to the combination of extreme heat and poor air quality. Supporting vulnerable communities and individuals to adapt to a changing climate, and enabling climate equity, will be a priority when assessing how to mitigate impacts and the cost of those actions.
3.6    Addressing climate impacts and building capacity across organisations in London to respond to them will benefit those most impacted by climate change. The guidance will focus on climate justice approaches to adaptation planning and monitoring. This will ensure action is targeted where it is most needed.
 

    Key risks and issues

Links to Mayoral strategies
4.1    This work has direct links to the overall aim of the London Environment Strategy to make Londoners resilient to severe weather and longer-term impacts of climate change, including flood, heat and drought. This work also aligns with the Mayor’s recently published delivery plan - Delivering a Greener, More-Climate Resilient London – by providing delivery partners with the tools and information to take effective action and convening partnership action on climate resilience.
4.2    The GLA is committed to taking forward the recommendations of the London Climate Resilience Review (LCRR), and to make London more resilient to the impacts of climate change. The guidance will support this commitment by increasing adaptation knowledge and capacity, specifically plugging research gaps to provide evidence for action. The guidance will help support work to take forward the LCRR recommendations.
 Consultations and impact assessments, including data protection (as per the GLA’s requirements under GDPR), health and safeguarding where relevant
4.3    All records will be held in line with the GLA’s requirements under GDPR.
Conflicts of interest  
4.4    No conflicts of interest have been identified for any officers involved in the development of this proposal or drafting or clearance of this decision form.
 

5.1    Approval is being sought for match funding of £15,000 to procure additional resources to develop and deliver the written output from the recent Climate Costs Forum.
5.2    The funding will come from the LCRP’s ringfenced reserves of £42,600 which is classified by the GLA as LCCP income and is therefore not part of the GLA’s core budget as detailed in DD2109.
5.3    All expenditure will be incurred by the 31 March 2026. All appropriate budget adjustments will be made.