ADD2255 LSDC's Progarmme of Quality Life/SDGs and Young Londoners

The GLA wishes to engage a consultant(s) to explore the views of young Londoners (ages 15-24) around key environmental, social and economic issues facing London.

This programme of work will seek to understand the views of a diverse and demographically representative sample of young Londoners on a variety of issues. These issues will not explicitly be labelled sustainable development to the young people themselves but will subsequently be mapped against a selection of relevant United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and related LSDC Quality of Life (QoL) indicators. This assessment should also capture the perspective of young Londoners regarding how the SDGs will impact future generations. Data and results from the London Sustainable Development Commission’s (LSDC) 2017 Quality of Life report will be used where possible to inform the conversations.

The delivery of the engagement/outreach activities will be led/delivered by an internal team of GLA officers from the Education and Youth team. GLA officers have agreed to organise and facilitate workshops and discussions with representative young groups and partners identified by the GLA and LSDC such as: the GLA’s Peer Outreach Group, Mayor’s Young Advisors and the Young London Network amongst others. The LSDC and GLA Education and youth team will also engage with the Opinion research team to gather the views of young people. Their budget needs for the delivery of these outreach activities will be covered by this ADD.

The consultant(s) we wish to engage will be expected to coordinate the outreach/engagement process with relevant stakeholders, to produce a report and contribute to related communication materials that will help the LSDC raise awareness and inform future debate:

• To inform action at the national, regional and local level, with a particular focus on Mayoral priorities;
• To prompt government and other key stakeholders to recognise the value of working towards the SDGs and their relevance to young Londoners;
• To provide an integrated and factual commentary that can be used as an example of London’s sustainability performance for a specific set of indicators; and
• To highlight to decision makers the key issues that are important to young people in relation to the SDGs and highlight priority areas for action.

The final outputs of this work will include a report (to be published on the GLA/LSDC website) highlighting the SDGs of most significance to young Londoners and future generations, as well as a more visual output capturing what young Londoners perceive as a positive vision for London. Outcomes from this project will inform the LSDC to target its future work providing independent advice to the Mayor of London on his sustainable development duty. Results from the outreach/engagement activities will also help the GLA Education and Youth team increase their understanding of the issues that matter to young people across London. These can help inform and tailor their campaigns and policies.

Background

This piece of work is being commissioned by the London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC). The London Sustainable Development Commission was appointed by the Mayor in 2002 to advise him on ways to make London a more sustainable city. A key role of the Commission is to promote sustainability in London.

The baseline data for the assessment of the opinions of young Londoners will be the 2017 Quality of Life Indicators (QoL) Report. The purpose of the QoL reports are to monitor a suite of indicators chosen to provide a cross cutting snapshot of London's sustainability performance and provide baseline data that will inform the Commission's future work programme and advice to the Mayor.

To date, the QoL Reports have allowed the LSDC to:

• Provide an independent, overall ‘benchmark’ on the sustainability of London; and
• Identify policy gaps the LSDC believes the Mayor may need to address in more detail.

The QoL Reports are also used as the basis in making the case for further interventions, direct further research and to highlight key sustainability issues that still exist in London.

The LSDC produced the first QoL Indicators Report in 2004, and in 2005 published its first progress report against the twenty QoL indicators. In 2005, the LSDC agreed they would move to three/four-yearly reporting on the indicators and published further Quality of Life Indicator Reports in 2009, 2012 and 2017.

Latest version of report can be found at: http://www.londonsdc.org.uk/quality-of-life/quality-of-life.aspx

More information on the work of the LSDC can be found at /who-we-are/city-halls-partners/london-sustainable-development-commission

Relevance of the work

As implementation and monitoring progress towards the SDGs are not legally binding for nations or cities, the success of the SDGs, will to a great degree, rely on citizens who will have to hold their leaders and governments to account and remind them of their commitments. As stated by Plan International , engaging young people to gather their views is essential because young people are critical thinkers, change-makers, innovators, communicators, and leaders.

The SDGs are a universal agenda for “transforming our world.” To achieve this transformation, governments must rethink the approaches of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) era that left young people out of the process. Governments that recognise the value of collaborating with young people as partners and establish clear and explicit pathways for their meaningful participation from the outset will be much better positioned to achieve the 17 SDGs and related targets.

The seventh UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF 2019) will take place next year. Among other things, HLPF 2019 will consider the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which is issued every four years. As the UK Government has committed to reporting on progress against the SDGs at the HLPF 2019, this report will present a great opportunity to raise awareness with central government of the need to engage regional and local government ahead of the meeting.

Objectives

The purpose of this work is to:

• Understand the priorities and concerns of young Londoners (aged 15-24) and cross-reference these against the latest LSDC QoL Report and Global UN SDGs
• Develop a vision for the future informed by the views of young Londoners highlighting the conditions that might have changed for them to enjoy a better quality of life (this may be supported by visuals / infographics)
• Engage with political leaders and other London stakeholders to ensure their commitment to addressing the concerns of young Londoners and playing their part in ensuring a better London for future generations

Outputs

As part of the engagement/outreach phase of the work, the consultant(s) will submit a plan and relevant communication materials and capacity building tools to be used for the engagement process with a diverse and representative number of young Londoners.

For the analysis phase of the work, the consultant(s) will produce a bespoke London report that will contain the following elements:

• A commentary and analysis of the results emerging from the indicators drawing out key issues that still need to be tackled in London as highlighted by the results.
• Commentary on key issues arising from the think piece to be illustrated with London case studies involving young people.
• An SDG vision for London based on the views and input of young Londoners. This will include an integrated and factual commentary on the results from a future generations point of view.
• An introduction
• A foreword
• Executive summary document
• Annex with summary of interviews/consultations.

As part of the communications phase of the work, the consultant(s) will develop a communication package with communication materials such as infographics and other visuals depending on the outcomes of the research.

Audiences

There are potentially multiple audiences for this report: The GLA family, Central government, Businesses, decision-makers in local authorities and other public bodies (e.g. Development Corporations; Primary Care Trusts etc). For wider communications beyond the report, considerations will also be given to communications materials tailored towards young Londoners of different ages.

• The report will comply with the GLA’s policies on equality and accessibility.
• The report and overall programme of work will cover a number of indicators that will cover the social, environmental and economic agendas.
• In particular, the report will be looking to highlight equality issues in the report.

1. The evaluation process will be conducted to ensure that submissions are evaluated fairly to select the most economically advantageous offer. The quotation evaluation process will take account of the following:

1. The letting of the contract will be managed by the GLA’s Sustainable Development Team. A contract will be granted after a competitive tender process.

1. The final outputs be produced with consideration to making it accessible to Londoners, with non-technical summaries available for the public.

1. key risks and issues: High level risks

b) links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

1. This programme of work covers issues and indicators that link directly to the London Environment Strategy, London Plan and other Mayoral strategies, such as those dealing with issues affecting to young Londoners such as housing, health inequalities, transport, economic development.

1. This programme of work will be developed/delivered in collaboration with officers from the GLA directorates and departments to ensure that the methodologies and results applied are robust and relevant.

c) impact assessments and consultations.

1. Production of the outputs of this programme of work will be developed with consultation from key GLA teams who cover the issues and areas of focus for the report. In addition, external consultees such as the Peer Outreach Workers group will also be consulted on the work developed.

Assistant Director’s approval is sought for the expenditure of up to £25,000 to engage a consultant to undertake research for and the design and print of a report for the London Sustainable Development Commission exploring the views of young Londoners around key environmental, social and economic issues facing London. This is to be funded from Environment team’s 2018-19 programme budget for Sustainable Development Programmes.