ADD2805 Supporting GLA Group Blue Light Services to become more climate resilient

1.1.    Emergency services like the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and London Fire Brigade (LFB) are already feeling the impacts of climate change. Heatwaves and floods damage their buildings and drive up costs, disrupt operations and reduce service reliability, as well as affect staff health and well-being. Over the past eight years, emergency services have spent more than £11 million responding to wildfires and floods.  These events also impact the MPS which supports safety coordination and evacuations during these events. Many LFB and MPS facilities are also vulnerable to overheating and flooding which threatens operational continuity and staff welfare.

1.2.    The Mayor’s Climate Budget outlines GLA Group spending to achieve the Mayor’s commitment to make London net-zero by 2030 and more resilient to climate change. GLA Group members have expressed that reporting on adaptation progress is challenging due a lack of organisation-specific climate risk data and clear pipeline of adaptation interventions to address these risks. To date, the GLA has supported GLA Land and Property and London Legacy Development Corporation to develop climate risk assessments and adaptation plans and both organisations have subsequently reported success in embedding adaptation into decision-making and climate strategies. Due to this success, the GLA has extended the offer to the MPS and the LFB.

1.3.    The GLA therefore proposes to fund LFB and MPS to develop climate risk assessments and adaptation action plans. The climate risk assessments will identify the priority risks and what the impacts of these are to the LFB and MPS, now and in the future. These findings will be used to develop an adaptation action plan which sets out key interventions needed to reduce risk and strengthen climate resilience.

1.4.    Under the Mayor’s Delivering a Greener, More Climate-Resilient London programme (approved by MD3384) the Mayor delegated authority to the Assistant Director, Environment and Energy as the Senior Responsible Owner for the programme to incur expenditure on the project ‘Convening partnership action on climate resilience’.

1.5.    The GLA proposes to provide £50,000 funding each to MPS and LFB to procure a consultant to produce the following outputs:

a)    Baseline stocktake: A review of the organisation’s current position on managing climate risks, assessing practices across core functions.

b)    Climate risk assessment: The identification and assessment of key risks affecting buildings, critical assets, staff, and operations. This includes direct physical hazards as well as policy, legal, technology, market, and reputational challenges.

c)    Climate adaptation action plan: The identification of priority measures needed to build climate resilience including interventions, actions, and organisational steps to better manage climate risks. These will be selected based on a multi-criteria assessment looking at things such as risk severity, effectiveness, feasibility, and cost.
 

2.1.    This work will contribute towards the overarching London-level outcome: London is resilient to extreme weather and the impacts of climate change. 

2.2.    This will be achieved by helping the MPS and the LFB identify the climate impacts they face and the adaptation actions needed to build climate resilience. The climate risk assessment and action plan will identify measures needed to safeguard core aspects of the organisation, including its buildings, staff, and operations. This information will strengthen the case for investing in adaptation and enable them to develop a pipeline of measures for inclusion in future climate budgets. 

2.3.    Additional outcomes include:

•    demonstrable leadership on climate change and adaptation from the GLA Group
•    enhanced organisational awareness of the importance of climate adaptation and its direct relevance to buildings and asset portfolio, service delivery, staff safety, and strategic objectives
•    comprehensive understanding of climate risks, including cost implications and potential impacts on the organisation
•    enhanced organisation awareness of adaptation gaps and understanding of areas requiring action, with proposals of targeted interventions to mitigate identified risks
•    evidence-based assessment of adaptation options, with insights into their potential effectiveness and cost implications to support robust business cases for investment
•    an established pipeline of adaptation measures for inclusion in the MPS and LFB Climate Budget submissions.
 

3.1.    Under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority, the GLA is 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.

3.2.    The “protected characteristics” are age, disability, gender re-assignment, 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 is 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.

3.3.    Climate risks are not shared equally and action to increase London’s climate resilience must prioritise those most at risk. Work to identify and address climate risks across the MPS and LFB’s buildings, staff, and operations will take into account underlying inequalities and seek to address environmental injustice by embedding a focus on actions which reduce inequalities. Assessing climate risks across the estate can enable the GLA to build understanding of structural vulnerabilities and the distribution of climate impacts, as well as help to engage with those affected to participate in the adaptation planning and implementation.
 

Key risks and issues

4.1.    The table below sets out the potential risks and mitigating actions.

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.2.    This activity delivers on the ‘Convening partnership action on climate resilience’ project within the Delivering a Greener, More Climate-Resilient London delivery plan, approved by (MD3384). These objectives underscore the GLA’s role as a strategic authority in supporting key partners to become more climate resilient. This piece of work delivers on these objectives by providing targeted support to the GLA group emergency services to tackle extreme heat and flood risk and strengthen climate resilience.

Conflict of interest 

4.3.    No conflicts of interest have been identified for any officers involved in the development of this proposal, or the drafting or clearance of this decision form.

5.1.    Approval is requested for the expenditure of a revenue grant of £100,000 to be transferred under Section 121 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 to support the Metropolitan Police Service and London Fire Brigade to commission consultants to produce a Baseline Stocktake (Task A), Climate Risk Assessment (Task B), and Climate Adaptation Action Plan (Task C) in line with the Delivering a Greener, More Climate-Resilient London delivery plan.

5.2.    There are two options under consideration for how this expenditure will be disbursed, as laid out below:

•    Option 1: A single revenue grant transfer of £100,000 will be made to the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) under Section 121 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (with MOPAC then funding the MPS accordingly). The MPS will then manage the overarching contract on behalf of both the MPS and LFB.

•    Option 2: Two separate revenue grant transfer of £50,000 each will be made under Section 121 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999. One revenue grant transfer to MOPAC (with MOPAC then funding the MPS accordingly) and one revenue grant transfer to the London Fire Commissioner (who will serve as the delegated authority for the LFB and transfer the funding to LFB accordingly).

5.3.    As demonstrated in the table below, the expenditure will be funded from the Delivering a Greener, More Climate Resilient London programme budget, under the ‘Convening partnership action on climate resilience’ project. The money will be given to the relevant functional bodies this financial year as an upfront payment. 

5.4.    All appropriate budget adjustments will be made.