Building a Fairer City Progress Report

Key information

Publication type: General

1. Foreword

Foreword by Cllr. Clare Holland, Leader of Lambeth Council

Thoughts about the pandemic may not be front and centre in our minds; replaced perhaps by other crises, such as the persistent economic crisis and devastating global conflict. However, the pandemic’s impact is far reaching and continues to affect the lives of many Londoners and their families and friends.

The London Partnership Board’s Structural Inequalities Subgroup was asked to produce the Building a Fairer City structural inequalities action plan for London. Its purpose is to respond to these inequalities and begin to mitigate their effects. We reached out to communities to ask them directly how the pandemic had impacted their lives. We also wanted to know what changes they need to see to reduce systemic bias and discrimination.

The board distilled the feedback from communities and other influential organisations into 14 ambitious actions, spanning four priority areas. Our aim was to influence commitment, determination, and action in areas where we won't duplicate the valuable work of others and provide a space to celebrate and highlight this positive work.

The plan was launched at City Hall in May 2022. Since then, we’ve worked with the Greater London Authority (GLA), our delivery partners, Shared Intelligence, and East London Business Alliance (ELBA). Together, we've engaged with partners across multiple sectors to learn how far they have progressed in their journey to tackle structural inequality.

This has led us to develop a tailored programme of support, which was rolled out in the second half of 2023. It aims to assist an array of key sectors across London, including health, business, education, policing, voluntary and community sectors, to work collaboratively to start meaningfully shifting the dial on inequality. We will build upon and strengthen this further in years 2 and 3 of the programme.

Of course, entrenched inequality is not a new concept. However, it requires a dynamic and context-specific approach. We will share the initial learnings from this approach below, in our first annual Building a Fairer City annual progress report.

Many partners across various sectors have shown huge commitment over the last 18 months. They have supported us to refine and develop the programme of support and have played a leading role in applying this learning directly within their organisations and sectors. These partners have recognised how this work helps them to deliver their own organisational priorities and outcomes in more effective ways.

Our coalition of partners may be growing, but we still need many more organisations and sectors to come on board. Please join us, adopt the plan, commit to its vision: to build a fairer more equal London for everyone to live and work in.

Cllr. Claire Holland

Leader of Lambeth Council

2. An introduction to the Building a Fairer City action plan, London’s Structural Inequalities action plan

Building a Fairer City Action Plan

Building A Fairer City is the London Partnership Board’s action plan for tackling structural inequality in London. It was agreed by the London Partnership Board in March 2022 and launched at City Hall in May 2022.

The plan sets out four priorities for work to address why Covid-19 had a disproportionate impact on certain groups. These are:

Labour market inequality
Financial hardship and living standards
Equity in public services, and
Civil society strength.

Delivery of these priorities is supported by 14 actions that partners/sectors can take to address structural inequality.

The plan is a voluntary framework to inform our partners’ approaches to addressing inequality in London. It also recognises that there is a huge amount of work already happening across London. This plan doesn’t seek to duplicate or undermine that; rather, it is intended to augment existing work.

In agreeing the plan, members of the London Partnership Board (LPB) agreed that they would use the framework to assess and develop action within their own organisations, as well as promoting its use amongst wider partners.

Read the full Building a Fairer City action plan

The London Partnership Board

The London Partnership Board (LPB) was formerly known as the London Recovery Board. It is chaired jointly by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Chair of London Councils, Councillor Georgia Gould. LPB members are drawn from London’s government, businesses and public bodies, education, the NHS, trade unions and the police.

The LPB builds on the experience of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. It brings together London’s leaders so the city can better respond to current and future complex and cross-cutting challenges. It helps coordinate London’s response to these and foster collaboration between the city’s partners at local, sub-regional and city level to achieve shared goals.

Find out more about the London Partnership Board

The London Partnership Board Structural Inequalities Subgroup

The LPB assigned a sub-group of members to co-produce a cross-sectoral, candid, and realistic vision to address structural inequalities within London. The group worked with representative bodies of communities to develop and publish Building a Fairer City, the LPB’s structural inequalities action plan for London.

The subgroup’s purpose is to drive action to address structural inequalities and racism. It focuses on those actions that can be directly taken by members of the London Partnership Board. The subgroup provides strategic direction, senior stakeholder input, and steers development and rollout of the programme. It meets roughly every two months.

Community vision statements

Community engagement partners were vital to developing a series of vision statements that formed the foundation of the action plan. Their work helped to set the vision and ambition for the changes required by those groups and communities most affected by the pandemic.

The statements focus on the needs and experiences of Black and minoritised Londoners, LGBTQI+ Londoners, older Londoners, Deaf and disabled Londoners, and women and girls.

See the community vision statements

We are most grateful to our community engagement partners who developed the vision statements:

Action on Race Equality (ARE)
The Ubele Initiative
The LGBT Consortium
Inclusion London
The Women’s Resource Centre
The London Age-Friendly Forum

To create the framework for the action plan, a series of ‘vision statements’ were produced. These describe the inequalities that communities experienced and continue to experience, and which caused the pandemic to disproportionately impact their lives.

The statements captured each community’s view of what changes in approach and practice organisations could make to lessen the inequalities they face daily. This work helped ensure that the plan was rooted in community reality and reflects people’s life experiences. Importantly, it also formed the foundation of the action plan.

Using these vision statements, the structural inequalities subgroup, collaborating partners/sectors and London’s communities agreed a programme of work. It focuses on aspects of life in London with the strongest link between COVID-19 impacts and inequality.

The vision statements also incorporated feedback from London Councils, borough officers, LPB Equalities Subgroup members, members of the Mayor’s Equality Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group and GLA staff teams and staff networks.

3. Our goals and ambitions for year one of the Building a Fairer City programme

The LPB knew that a new cross sectoral approach was required to tackle persistent and entrenched inequality in London.

Since launching the plan in May 2022, we have worked towards realising our original vision of establishing a cross sectoral ‘coalition of the willing’. That is a body of partner organisations inspired and united by the common cause of challenging and tackling structural inequality, who we will then support to spread this good practice across their wider sectors and networks.

The action plan is ambitious and many of the actions in Building a Fairer City are not easy fixes. To eradicate the entrenched, long-standing perceptions and practices that underpin inequalities and injustice requires long-term commitment. This action has a three-year life span. Its intention is to unify action across sectors and kickstart meaningful solutions and actions that lie within organisations.

The GLA appointed Shared Intelligence and ELBA in January 2023 as our primary and secondary delivery partners. This has enabled us to deliver the LPB’s aspirations for year one of the Building a Fairer City programme. It has also helped to maintain the momentum expressed by partners at the launch event in May 2022. We appointed Shared Intelligence to work collaboratively to design and deliver an implementation programme. This includes a programme of organisational support, which is expected to run over three years until the end of 2025.

This support has helped organisations to understand, adopt and implement actions under each priority area identified in the Building a Fairer City action plan. It has also supported these organisations to assess their performance, develop their approach and progress initiatives to practically tackle structural inequality.

The LPB rolled out this programme of support in the latter half of 2023, the first year of the programme. It helps organisations (LPB members and partners) to build on the work that’s happened across London since the start of the pandemic (and well before). The aim is to embed good practice and foster organisational understanding of structural inequality and racism. This will help to shift the dial on inequality in London as part of continuing recovery.

The programme is based around the four priorities in Building a Fairer City. It provides expert support to bring partners together around a small group of more specific and tightly defined problems or challenges. Shared Intelligence, our delivery partner supports organisations to understand the drivers of these issues and produce evidence-based approaches to address them. It also advises how to implement change and monitors the outcomes associated with addressing those specific problems and challenges.

Throughout the programme, organisations are supported to better understand the impacts of structural inequality. This enables them to develop better policies, programmes and initiatives that tackle structural inequality and address actions against the plan’s four priority areas. These priorities are set out on page 3.

4. Core activity updates from year one

How the plan was developed

On 3 June 2021, the London Partnership Board agreed to create a structural inequalities sub-group. This group was tasked with developing an action plan to address the causes of the unequal impacts of COVID-19. In addition, the group was asked to develop a framework to assess progress against those actions.

The action plan represents a set of actions that LPB member organisations and partners can take to achieve the ambitions within the vision statements. The plan was informed by extensive engagement with a range of bodies. These include London Councils, members of the London Health Board, the team leading the London Anchor Institutions Programme, the Borough Recovery Coordination Group, Chief Executives of London Committee (CELC) and the NHS Integrated Care System London network.

The plan consists of 14 ambitious actions across four priority areas as follows:

Priority		Action
Labour Market	1	Ensure our workforces reflect London at all levels.
	2	Actively promote employment rights to ensure equity and fairness at work
	3	Increase opportunities for London’s diverse businesses, voluntary and community sector organisations
Financial Hardship	4	Make London a Living Wage City
	5	Implement the spirit of the socio-economic Duty of Section One of the Equality Act
	6	Support the financial wellbeing of staff
	7	Support Londoners to now and access their rights and entitlements
Equity in Public Services	8	Put London’s communities at the heart of service provision
	9	Improve communities’ levels of trust and confidence in public service providers
	10	Prioritise work to tackle structural racism
	11	Address the impact of eligibility criteria on accessing public services
	12	Make digital services accessible and provide alternatives for people without digital access
Civil Society Strength	13	Increase the proportion of funding for equalities-led, equity groups and civil society work that supports Londoners facing discrimination
	14	Support strong relationships between equalities-led civil society, funders, public bodies, and private companies.

The plan includes actions that recovery partners can take in their capacity as employers, as service providers, and as organisations that can influence others. The actions are framed to allow different organisations to progress them in ways that work best for their specific or sectoral context.

All board members’ organisations committed to consider how the actions outlined can be incorporated into their business plans or corporate approaches, with a view to making progress over the next three years. It is for individual organisations to decide how to prioritise those actions that are most pressing for them and their wider sectors. This will not be prescribed as each will have a different context and be more advanced or need further focus or support in some areas than others.

Actions to address Labour Market Inequality and Financial Hardship are aimed at all partners. Actions to improve Equity in Public Services are aimed at public sector partners. Actions to support Civil Society Strength are for public sector bodies and funders, but also address civil society organisations and the private sector. The actions are aligned with those proposed through the Anchor Institution Charter and provide another vehicle to deliver on these commitments.

Maturity mapping

Our partner Shared Intelligence developed a ‘maturity mapping model’. This helps organisations to understand their role in supporting outcomes linked to the Building a Fairer City priorities.

In early 2023, Shared Intelligence worked with over 20 partner representative organisations and networks to help them map their maturity. This work also enabled them to understand how their current activities and commitments help to reduce inequalities and evaluate where support is most needed.

Shared Intelligence worked with organisations to use the maturity model to reflect on their individual or sectoral equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) performance.

By completing the self-assessment exercise (or maturity map), organisations identified areas of strength and weakness in terms of EDI. The maturity model was used to agree the ‘next steps’ on their EDI journey. There was also a free programme of support to help organisations to achieve their EDI goals.

We engaged around 20 organisations or representative bodies as part of our delivery partners’ maturity mapping approach. This section provides an overview of the action being taken by sectors across the plan’s four priority areas to tackle structural inequalities and racism. It also highlights what organisations are keen to do to make progress on their priorities and contribute to making London a fairer city.

Caveats apply when working across different sectors and with large institutions, at different stages of their journey to tackle structural inequality and structural racism. However, this section indicates where progress is being made and where the LPB could next direct its focus.

Developing the support offer

GLA officers worked with delivery partners, Shared Intelligence and ELBA, to develop a suite of learning offers. These will support LPB member organisations and wider partners to collectively drive forward the plan’s actions. They will also help to promote shared ownership across sectors and embed the voice of communities and equalities experts.

Support in year one of the programme included a core offer targeting action on a key issue within each of the four Building a Fairer City priority areas. There was also related support to help organisations to focus in further to deliver change.

The support was based on conversations from stakeholders across sectors, with input from the LPB Structural Inequalities Subgroup.

The integrated offer for each priority area included:

Expert/challenge events to expose an issue, share insights of ‘what works’ from sector representatives and deliver tangible action plans. This allows space for debate but moves beyond the rhetoric.
Action learning sets targeted at smaller groups. Creating ‘safe space’ discussions among peers to tackle sensitive issues, and learning from what works and what could be done differently.
Study tours to share learning from practical examples of approaches or schemes that work. This gives organisations first-hand experience of how to move from theory into delivery.
Resources, tools, and information where written records of practical action or good practice can reach wider and help inform action.

This support builds on and adds value to positive action already being progressed. Examples include existing GLA offers such as the Workforce Integration Network (WIN) and the Trust for London, Citizens UK, and Living Wage Foundation programmes. It brought together organisations from across sectors to discuss challenging topics, enabling networking, peer learning and sharing learning through experience and best practice approaches.

The support programme was designed to accelerate, deepen, and widen partners’ knowledge base and encourage meaningful action to address inequalities. We encouraged partners to sign up to as many of the learning offers as possible and to promote them to their contacts.

4.1 An overview of the support offer activities being delivered against each action

Year one aimed to support organisations in the LPB, and partners, to collectively drive forward actions in the Building a Fairer City action plan. This included promoting shared ownership across sectors, rooting in the voice of communities and equalities experts, and identifying and gathering measures to show impact.

The programme has five key aspects:

Support partner organisations to understand structural inequality and racism.
Support partner organisations to take forward actions from the Building a Fairer City action plan and deliver against the plan’s four priority areas.
Measure impact of action taken.
Engage and involve the community sector to guide and inform the programme.
Share learning more widely across sectors.

What does the year one programme support consist of?

Priority	Focus action	Support offer
Labour Market	1	Ensure our workforces reflect London at all levels. We asked leaders from across sectors (public, private and VCS) what it would take to make progress in addressing underrepresentation in the workforce. This offer posed the question, ‘is positive action coupled with accountability at all levels the best way to step up the pace on underrepresentation?’
Financial Hardship	4 & 6	Make London a Living Wage City We wanted to increase the number of accredited London Living Wage (LLW) organisations across London and take action to address financial wellbeing more widely. This offer focused on an action learning process with south London boroughs to help increase the number of LLW employers.
Equity in Public Services	8 & 9	8 - Put London’s communities at the heart of service provision 9 - Improve communities’ levels of trust and confidence in public service providers We wanted more Londoners from under-represented backgrounds involved in funding decisions and grant-making that will affect their local area. This engagement offer is emerging as sectors want to better understand where more progress can be made when involving communities.
Civil Society Strength	8 & 14	8 - Increase the proportion of funding for equalities-led, equity groups and civil society work that supports Londoners facing discrimination 14 - Support strong relationships between equalities-led civil society, funders, public bodies, and private companies. We wanted to showcase good practice and innovation in civil society engagement, encouraging peer learning through study tours and visits to organisations.

4.2 The context of inequality across sectors

The below summarises the plans and priorities being taken across sectors to make progress on the four priorities in the Building a Fairer City plan.

The LPB priority sectors for this programme of work are health, community and voluntary sector, trade unions, business, education, local government, and the GLA Group. These sectors will be reviewed and expanded upon as part 2 of the programme starts in 2024.

Priority	Sector	Action taken
Labour Market	Health	The NHS introduced a Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) in 2016 and has collected data for the past seven years. Nationally, there are clear priorities for an inclusive culture where diversity is valued and celebrated. The percentage of the workforce from minority ethnic backgrounds has been rising since 2016 and is now 24.2 per cent. The NHS is focusing on developing and improving leadership diversity. This is shown through the London People Board, chaired by one of the Integrated Care Boards (ICB’s). The challenge now is to think holistically about the combined health and care workforce, and how to make joining it more attractive. This requires working with the voluntary sector.
	VCS	The voluntary and community sector (VCS) aspires to greater diversity in their workplaces to be more representative of the communities they serve. This is challenging in small organisations, but a focus on improving recruitment processes and nurturing junior talent show commitment. There is some positive practice where VCS organisations actively promote employment rights, collate data, and share good examples of dignity at work policies. This helps engender equity among grantees and some VCS organisations are practitioners and advocates for participatory grant-making, which builds capacity.
	Trade unions	Trade unions have been at the forefront of tackling labour market inequality in London. Many organisations specifically work to promote employment rights, including campaigns, workplace resources and lobbying on behalf of workers. Unions are broadly reflective of London in terms of protected characteristics in the workforce. Improvements can be made in relation to race equality including in recruitment, promotion, and advancement. Unions also have campaigns on making its large volunteer force reflect the public sector workforce in London.
	Business	Business networks we engaged highlighted reports and campaigns related to different aspects of workplace diversity. • Opportunities for Jobcentre Plus to engage differently with disabled people to support them into work, including self-employment. • A Founders Awareness campaign which has made good progress in recruiting under-represented founders to participate. • ‘Change the Race Ratio’ to support businesses in implementing the Parker Review, to achieve targets in ethnic minority representation at very senior levels.
	Education	Higher education representatives estimate that 63 per cent of those trained in 2021/22 were from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds. As they support most of these people into graduate-level work, this contributes to helping grow London’s economy and addressing labour market inequality. London Higher is producing a business impact report on how universities benefit enterprise and can support businesses across London’s communities. London Higher said they would like GLA support to create better connectivity between graduating higher education students and SMEs in London. This will help to ensure all London businesses can recruit from London’s diverse student pool. They particularly see potential to improve placement take-up amongst students from groups currently underrepresented in London’s labour market through a central IT platform.
	Local government	Both Lambeth and Islington councils are working to address labour market inequality. Lambeth see this as a role fulfilled by their employment and skills strategy which has priority groups who face challenges in entering the labour market. It aims to provide intensive and personalised support. CLF is active at the strategic level, through its work in relation to the London Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP). The focus is integration of employment services. Islington is undertaking action learning sets to ensure agreement over the common mission of improving diversity of local business ownership in its supply chain. Islington has identified it would benefit from support through best practice advice around employment practices in supply chains. Lambeth would be interested in good practice sharing about incentivising employers to adopt positive employment practices.
	GLA Group	For Transport for London (TfL) a key task is to broaden representation in non-frontline parts of the organisation. This includes head office, professional services, and senior management. The organisation recognises that it needs to represent London to best serve it, and workforce diversity is in the corporate scorecard. The Royal Docks Team (RDT) considers that it has an indirect role through its emphasis on Community Wealth Building. This encourages incoming employers to hold to principles and standards of equality and equity.
Financial Hardship	Health	The NHS is committed to being a LLW employer with 75 per cent of trusts committed to being living wage accredited. However, it is challenging to achieve this throughout the supply chain. This is because it has limited influence over the wages sub-contractors pay, and it is hard to influence GPs who operate as private businesses. But the NHS acknowledge that delivering on the LLW would have a tangible impact. The NHS has supported their workers with discounts, resources, wellbeing support and practical financial support. But influencing the sector further can be challenging due to the issue around accountability for change.
	VCS	In general, VCS organisations pay the LLW and are London Living Wage accredited. The VCS continues to promote its importance among its membership. In grant-making, some VCS organisations have introduced an informal consideration about whether the potential recipient pays LLW. Other VSC organisations are collating examples of financial wellbeing policies to share with other organisations. Partnerships have also been developed to assist with local hardship.
	Trade unions	Trade unions have worked alongside employees during the cost-of-living crisis to support them with their pay. For example, negotiating with employers and advising on strike action. They also work with employers to try to alleviate financial pressures on workers. This has included encouraging employers to carry out Equality Impact Assessments. Unions also offer debt counselling and financial advice and campaign for the LLW.
	Business	A key message from the business sector concerns the cost of childcare and its impact on women and low-income families’ access to work. Partners highlighted the important role of small business in employing single parents. Others have been campaigning in this area for many months before the March 2023 budget changes. Many businesses have supported employees during the cost-of-living crisis with additional pay reviews, wellbeing provision and one-off bonus payments. It was highlighted how for small business, progress towards LLW (as well as other accreditations) does need support – it is described as ‘a journey’. To help, there should be more on the London Business Hub to spotlight support available for small firms and their employees experiencing financial hardship.
	Education	London Higher is concerned about how the cost of living crisis is impacting students. For example, causing them to prioritise part-time work over their studies, with risks for academic outcomes. Their ask is to work with the GLA to systematically collect and publish data on the paid work done by full-time and part-time students in London. They also continue to campaign for additional funding for London Weighting. Another London Higher advocacy theme is promoting awareness of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. It considers this has potential to support some of the most disadvantaged groups into work and to help with progression. It wants to work with the sector and others to promote awareness of this when it comes in in 2025. It is also expanding the development of its Wellbeing Connect Tool. This aims to support mental health and wellbeing for all London students, providing signposting to support services.
	Local government	The organisations we engaged are committed to living wage standards. Islington is one of London’s first living wage areas. Local councils are keen to support local institutions (businesses and partners) to make sure they are promoting the LLW. Lambeth is similar, and keen to promote and champion the living wage to their suppliers as well through procurement practices. Councils are also taking active steps to address the impact of policies and practices on the cost of living. Lambeth self-assesses ‘complete’ against several of the hardship BFC steps. Lambeth also wants to encourage the use of effective Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) and share good practice with partners and other stakeholders. It would also like support in doing so.
	GLA group	Royal Docks was established as a Living Wage Place in July 2022. It considers the benefits of the status and specifically the process behind working towards it, is improving engagement with local organisations. Community Wealth Building (CWB) is the priority guiding policy stance and is woven into all RDT activities and investments and scrutinised against this. TfL offers support through its staff benefits (for example, free TfL travel for staff; discounts on national travel; exceptional loans hardship funds and employee assistance programme, which includes advice on debt management). TfL has also convened cost-of-living groups, but this initiative is still at an early stage.
Equity in Public Services	Health	The NHS’s relationship with the communities it serves is good and rooted in a good understanding of needs – this begins with GPs and community services. But there is less trust beyond these services. This could be seen in the way some groups responded to the COVID vaccine roll out. Restoring trust is key and facets include: • Building better engagement with the Community and Voluntary Sector (CVS) • Working towards digitising services whilst also providing fair access beyond digital means. • Finding space to consider the groups that fall into the cracks - migrant health and homeless health were cited as challenges.
	VCS	For VCS organisations we engaged, community engagement is key. They work to build the community voice into their services and track where grant funding goes. All are mature in this regard. Some VCS organisations use participatory grant making, which can help to build trust with local communities. There are examples of some good work, including some VCS programmes that address structural racism to fund ‘culturally accessible’ mental health services. Some funders were committed to exploring sharing power with local communities. However, it was noted some in the sector are hesitant to share this power.
	Trade unions	Trade unions describe a range of work relevant to this priority: • Member surveys to collect information about impacts on disadvantaged groups and to identify intersectional issues and particular barriers that inform priorities. • Working with the NHS to review workforce race equality data. • Within London, developing an anti-racism charter for employers. • Providing a range of digitised services, as well as paper and phone options for workers. Training is often run in a hybrid way.
	Business	Business works with incoming foreign direct investment growth clients to help access London’s diverse and under-represented talent pools. This helps to put London’s communities at the heart of service provision. It has also run several high-growth business schemes committed to supporting business leaders from under-represented and diverse backgrounds. The use of ‘public service’ to describe this priority meant some businesses did not see it as central for their networks.
	Education	There is currently limited work being done on this. London Higher runs a Global Mentoring Majority Programme. This supports career progression for Black, Asian, and minority ethnic staff by providing a platform to match mentors and mentees. This scheme will be evaluated in the autumn. In the future, London Higher would like more advocacy at a senior level.
	Local government	There is a strong commitment to understand and address structural racism. Councils train managers and frontline staff so they have the knowledge, mindset, and skills to understand the issue, including its root causes. This creates a continual learning culture so that good practice to address structural racism is shared across London. Islington has programmes on addressing structural racism and uses co-production and citizens’ voice. Within Lambeth, all staff complete EDI training, and unconscious bias training is also available. Training on other specific needs such as neurodiversity and deaf awareness is also being initiated. However, this is not fully rolled out for all frontline staff and is something for Lambeth to work on further. Islington showed interest in good practice in collecting data on public service equity and perhaps adapting the Barking and Dagenham social progress index. This is a support need.
	GLA Group	Both organisations understand the importance of public trust as public service providers. Public feedback and community engagement is something they are actively engaged in. RDT carried out a five-year review of community participation and has made recommendations to improve participation at different levels. It works with Newham Council’s equalities and anti-racism programme to inform its programmes and funds some Newham-led projects addressing inclusion of diverse groups. For example, with UEL supporting east London's entrepreneurs through a programme that focuses on the strengths of a highly diverse community and ensuring representation. TfL puts inclusion at the heart of all its work from step-free access to the work of local engagement teams. TfL notes that it has had an anti-racism charter within the organisation since 2021. In addition, much of the bottom-up, staff-led action had challenged the organisation in matters such as recruitment. This followed the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in the UK. Both TfL and RDT have taken active steps to make sure customer information and necessary formats online are accessible for all.
Civil Society Strength	Health	The size of the NHS creates a challenge for engagement, although Integrated Care Systems should have more freedom to engage with the CVS. Building capacity here will be key to developing maturity under this priority.
	VCS	The VCS is working to develop a platform to argue for funding to support diversity in the sector. The organisations we spoke to want to engage civil society to to build capacity and infrastructure to support resilience and self-sufficiency. A key issue is that the demographic of some large funders’ trustees is unrepresentative. We heard a clear message about the importance of engaging funding organisations with the Building a Fairer City plan. We incorporated this into our support offer.
	Trade unions	Trade unions do not directly fund VCS organisations. However, they donate to equities-led organisations to help support marginalised communities. Those organisations must commit to a set of values towards tackling discrimination.
	Education	In the future, London Higher is looking to deliver its Civic Data Innovation Challenge project, which is a tracker of civic strength in London. There is a need for GLA support and resources to further develop the tool. The London Higher Civic Map showcases how the sector works in partnership with key stakeholders beyond campuses.
	Local government	Lambeth has set targets for Black and female-owned businesses. Islington uses its core grants programme for VCS organisations to help provide support for capacity and to develop relationships. Innovative practice includes Lambeth Made Employment, Skills and Enterprise Programme. It ran an Innovation Fund for the Unheard Voices programme. This allowed community organisations to apply for funding and set their own plans and targets for delivery. Islington is committed to building a black cultural space (community hub to build skills and networking).
	GLA group	Both organisations already have strong relationships with local civil society organisations. RDT regularly coordinates, convenes, enables, and influences key stakeholders to listen to and involve civil society organisations and their concerns in the regeneration process. Under Community Wealth Building, it seeks to make funding for locally led projects more accessible to smaller, local organisations. TfL also has an outreach programme that connects local communities and partners teams with stakeholders.

4.3 Examples of wider activities undertaken by stakeholders to meet the actions

Below are some case study examples of actions that sectors have taken as a result of working with the London Partnership Board to implement actions from Building a Fairer City within their own organisations.

Higher education

London Higher represents almost 50 universities and higher education colleges across the capital. It has been an active partner and recognises the importance and value of the cross-sectoral ambitions of the Building a Fairer City programme.

London’s universities and businesses make a huge contribution to London.

Universities play a vital role in four main areas:

by teaching a diverse population of students and filling skills gaps
by providing world-class research and innovation
by contributing to their local communities, and
through acting as a fundamental part of the city’s global appeal.

Within the sector, London Higher has taken some innovative actions against the plan. This will ensure that work to support the growth of London’s economy addresses labour market inequality. Some examples include:

Collectively training and upskilling nearly 175,000 Londoners. Some 63 per cent were from Black, Asian, and other minority ethnic backgrounds.
Supported most of their students into graduate-level work.
Co-delivered employability programmes in key sectors of the capital’s economy. Examples include the Creative Skills Academy which aims to diversify the talent pipeline entering London’s creative sector.
Undertook research entitled, ‘Will it pay off’. It asked Year 12 and 13 students whether the cost of living in London is affecting their decision to pursue higher education study.
Developed a flagship scheme, ‘Global Majority Mentoring Programme’, that seeks to diversify the talent pipeline at all levels of London’s HE sector. It matches Black, Asian, and minority ethnic academic and professional services staff in London universities with a senior counterpart from another institution. The programme aims to improve career progression, offering mentees a tailored mentoring experience, and a space to seek outside support.

Health service

Programmes like Building a Fairer City (BFC) have influenced how the NHS thinks about structural inequality. It now focuses on what would be best for Londoners rather than what would be best for the organisation. The NHS welcomes the BFC programme developed to create sectoral movement on structural inequality. It prompts organisations to think differently about EDI strategy and harness the value that other organisations and sectors can bring to their work. Working with others can help accelerate change.

An example of this approach taken by the NHS Partnership is the Happy Baby Community. This supports women fleeing violence or traffickers who are either pregnant or have a young child and want international protection in the UK. Women seeking asylum don’t have access to cash, only a card that can be used in supermarkets to buy essential items. When women with children attempt to register the birth of their child in UK, birth certificates cost £11. However, they cannot pay the fee as registrars do not accept cash. This means there may be children in London that are unknown to the health and other services as their birth is not registered.

The NHS Partnership wrote a joint letter with Integrated Care Board (ICB) networks and London boroughs to the London Registrars Group about this anomaly. Registrars are now reviewing how they register children of asylum-seeking women to close this gap. This approach, in line with the BFC’s ambition, successfully brought together various health and local authority partners together to drive an important change.

4.4 Summary of key monitoring outcomes and metrics gathered through the programme.

In developing the Building a Fairer City action plan, it was vital to monitor, record, and report the impact of our work. This can then be reported back to the Londoners we first contacted at the start of the pandemic.

To do so, we worked with the GLA’s City Intelligence Unit, and the LPB Structural Inequalities Subgroup. Together, we developed, refined, and agreed a set of quantitative, qualitative, and experiential metrics that can be applied to the action plan. These are:

Level 1 metrics

These are city-wide quantitative measures that are outcome focused. They provide an overall picture of structural inequalities linked to the four priority areas of the plan across London.

These measures are linked to many influences, such as cost of living and poverty levels. It is not possible to directly link improvements or a worsening picture solely to work relating to the plan. However, they do help to indicate where further action is needed.

Level 2 metrics

These are quantitative measures that are based on the perception of Londoners. Questions are put to a sample of 1,000 Londoners every six months. This is representative for age, gender, education level and ethnicity. It provides a sense of progress by asking Londoners whether they feel they can see a change. These questions reflect the plan’s four priority areas.

The sample is structured to reflect demographics on four measures. Other circumstances are not controlled for, and opinions will vary by individual. Each wave of this tracking will ask a different sample of respondents the same question. These respondents may have different circumstances and opinions. As such, the variation seen cannot totally be attributed to a change in opinion. A margin of error will need to be accounted for when looking at change over time. However, they will help to indicate where further action is needed.

Level 3 metrics

This reporting template is a series of simple datasets organisations can use to self-assess their progress annually. It helps them track progress in implementing each of the 14 actions contained within the plan. Many of the level 3 metrics have a binary yes/no response due to the nature of the actions (for example, are you a Living Wage Employer?). Where data is available for a quantitative measure, relevant London wide data has been provided. This offers a benchmark for organisations to assess their own position and the potential need for action.

Level 3 metrics help individual organisations to understand and assess their own progress in working towards the aims of Building a Fairer City. Reporting is not mandatory. However, organisations are encouraged to share data, views on progress and challenges, and identify where additional support is needed through the annual reporting process.

Read more about level 3 metrics on the Building a Fairer City Hub webpage

4.5 Feedback and perspectives of BFC delivery stakeholders. Support for participants and wider community stakeholders about the progress, success and challenges of the programme to date.

Accelerating the pace of change in developing an inclusive workforce: Black, Asian and minoritised communities.

In September 2023, we ran an event focusing on how organisations can accelerate the pace of change in developing an inclusive workforce. Key learnings included:

Everyone in an organisation can contribute to creating an inclusive workforce. But understanding and buy-in at a senior level to prioritise and resource action, along with insights from employees across the organisation to inform action, are essential.
There are many examples of approaches organisations can take to make change. Organisations must consider what is possible and tangible to make change now. Toolkits are specifically designed to help with this. Actions must be sufficiently resourced.
Organisations must be held to account to ensure action remains a priority and progress is monitored. Beyond externally enforced regulations and duties (such as the Public Sector Equality Duty), there is flexibility in who can hold the organisation to account. For example, internal affinity groups can be well placed for this.

See the full learning note and key recommendations (Pending)

Accelerating change in developing an inclusive workforce: Disabled People

In October 2023, we ran an event focusing on how organisations can accelerate the pace of change in developing an inclusive workforce. Key takeaways were:

Organisations must be willing to actively listen to the experiences of their current staff in the workforce. They must work together to ensure lived experiences shape corporate policies, both for existing staff and in recruitment.
Changes and adjustments must be made to create an environment where employees have the support and resources they need at work. This includes working with affinity groups to understand their needs and delivering training that aligns with workforce needs to produce effective change. Organisational language should empower disabled employees.
Few forums exist where SMEs, DPOs and large corporations can share experiences about challenges they face and how to improve workforce inclusion.

See the full learning note and key recommendations (Pending)

5. Recommendations, ambitions and next steps for year 2

Having successfully developed and rolled out the first year of the support programme, we’re considering its future focus and format.

Working closely with Shared Intelligence, we intend to use a similar delivery approach which acknowledges the four learning styles (that is. expert/challenge events, (2) action Learning sets, (3) study tours, and (4) additional resources, tools and information

This enables organisations across sectors to learn from others in different settings, from small and bespoke groups to large-scale events and open discussions.

As with year one, we will encourage all partners to focus on delivering outcomes for Londoners and to measurer progress against level 3 metrics. This is so we can benchmark yearly progress.

To support further recommendations in future years, we have identified protected characteristics that need greater focus, alongside organisations or networks not yet engaged. In addition, there are some contextual factors we many need to review at the start of each year. This will help us develop ideas on how actions not addressed in year one could be addressed later.

In year one of the programme, support has largely focused on race, disability, and gender. We believe this should continue, developing into more detailed conversations and actions to move organisations closer to closing the inequality gap. For future years, there also needs to be a focus on LGBTQI+ Londoners and older Londoners. In particular, the interconnected and intersectional ways that discrimination affects these Londoners.

Some sectors or groups of organisations that have engaged so far may provide interesting perspectives on certain issues raised during year one. These include:

Sector/organisation
Housing associations	No housing associations were engaged with this process in year one. Given the large number of Londoners represented in social housing, this could be a target for action in years 2 and 3.
Higher education	We had limited interaction with organisations representing higher education in London during year one. Many universities in London want to be more accessible to a wider population and to extend their services to a broader community. This could therefore be a target for years 2 and 3.
Trade unions	While we have received strong and consistent support from trade unions throughout year one. There are strong links to employers and employees across London, and a commitment to equality. As such, this could be a further target for years 2 and 3
Law centres	This is an area we have yet to explore. These organisations are key in delivery of rights and entitlements of more vulnerable Londoners, in particular, social welfare law. This could be a target for years 2 and 3.
Voluntary & community services	A few VCS organisations have been involved and offered their support during year one, and in the planning stages to date. However, more support could be developed in terms of actions around priority 3 (Equity in Public Services) and priority 4 (Civil Society strength) particularly.

As we enter the second year of this 3-year programme, we will work with Shared Intelligence on a horizon scanning exercise. This will help us to understand what is changing for people in London, and what to integrate into future support offers.

We will work with GLA teams, wider GLA Group, LPB members and our partners to understand the changing social, political and economic context. We will use these insights to inform future targeted support offers. This will help to map out the second year of the programme, steer our direction of travel, and reduce risk of duplication.

6. Working in partnership over years 2 and 3

The LPB remains fully committed to shifting the dial on entrenched inequality in London. We are aware that this is a very ambitious aspiration. By working with partners across sectors we are confident that we can begin to bring about positive change for Londoners.

However, we need more partners to join us and adopt the Building a Fairer City action plan. We need them to commit to actions and promote the plan and the support programme over years 2 and 3.

We appreciate the value of partnerships when working to achieve the aims of the plan. We also understand that partners are in different places in their journeys to tackle structural inequality and that resources and capacity vary across sectors.

Through this programme we must ensure that all partners have the knowledge, skills and support they need to take efficient action and measure success. This will enable us to build a robust, effective partnership across the city.

Over the last year of the programme, we have developed relationships, built trust, and tested our approach. Now we are ready to progress years two and three of our plans.

We aim to further develop and refine our approach as we move forward to strengthen our support offer. We will work collaboratively with existing and newer partners to examine how each sector can achieve progress against the four priority areas.

We are ready to move quickly over the next two years. We need both our current and new partners to work with us and build our coalition of the willing. Together, we can take a stand against structural inequality in London.

Here are some ways organisations can take positive action to address the plan’s priorities:

Commit to using their procurement powers to open up contract opportunities for London’s diverse businesses, voluntary and community sector organisations. In addition, to encourage improved practices with suppliers. 
A higher proportion of money spent with smaller businesses in the local economy means a higher multiplier effect. That is because more income is generated for local people. More income retained locally, means more jobs and higher pay. All of which may lead to better living standards for residents and helps to sustain the small business sector.
Pay all staff (temporary, permanent and contractors), and those of their suppliers, at least the LLW.  
Publicly renew and strengthen their commitment to tackling structural racism and actively involve communities in the design and delivery of their services.

7. Thank you to all our partners

We wish to thank you all for your continued commitment, enthusiasm and guidance in developing and supporting implementation of the BFC action plan.

We could not have reached this stage of successful publication and delivery of support alone. We really appreciate how all our partners have enthusiastically embraced the challenge.

We also wish to extend our thanks and appreciation to our delivery partners, Shared Intelligence and ELBA. They have worked closely with us and our partners to bring expert support, additional insight, advice, and challenge. This was invaluable when developing the support offer for year one of this complex programme.

What started as a series of disparate vision statements is now a long-term ambitious plan for change. We now have a framework for actions partners can take to tackle structural inequalities and racism. The cost of living crisis makes this work even more time critical.

It has been a remarkable eighteen months since our launch in May 2022. The work has been fast paced, and your continued commitment is greatly appreciated. Working together, with a common cause, gives us a real chance to continue to show collective commitment across sectors. This will help us to further progress to end inequality in this city.

We must continue to work together to shift the dial on inequalities for Londoners and end structural inequalities for future generations.

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