Key information
Executive summary
• £488,000 for projects that are continuing from previous years, but which have not already been approved for 2019/20; and
• £403,000 for projects that are new and being initiated for the first time.
The balance of the team’s budget has been subject to separate, previous approvals (these are noted throughout this decision form where they relate to the new approvals being sought).
This expenditure will enable the Team London and Sport Unit to continue to support the Mayor’s ambitions of improving social integration, social mobility and community engagement for Londoners.
Decision
1. Approves expenditure in 2019/20 of up to £931,000 for the Team London and Sport Work Programme funded as follows:
(a) £841,000 from the GLA Team London budget;
(b) £50,000 from the GLA Sport budget; and
(c) £40,000 from external funding, if secured; and
2. Delegates to officers authority to:
(a) Seek, receive and spend the external funding noted at decision 1(c) above, as a contribution towards expenses related to the Team London 2019/20 Major Events and Visitor Welcome workstrands (without the need for a further decision form); and
(b) Approve detailed expenditure plans (via director or assistant director decision form(s), as relevant) for relevant new programmes/projects, once full details have been worked up (relevant projects/programmes are flagged within the body of the decision form).
Part 1: Non-confidential facts and advice
Team London and Sport is the unit within the GLA which includes the Mayor of London’s volunteering programme for London and Sport activities.
The GLA’s work in sport has two distinct strands: supporting major sporting events hosted in London, to help maximise their economic and social benefits to the city; and community sport – supporting those ‘on the ground’ in London in their use of sport and physical activity for improved health and wellbeing amongst Londoners, and for fairer, better connected, more inclusive communities.
The Sport Team’s work has a dual focus: Major Events and Sport Unites. Major Events are not included in the scope of this MD and will be covered in separate Decisions.
Team London
Team London’s work will focus on using volunteering to contribute towards reducing barriers to social mobility, improving social integration and effective community engagement. The overarching objectives are to support and promote active citizenship social integration, social mobility and community engagement for Londoners. The team also supports the resilience of the voluntary sector. All our initiatives focus on convening the public sector, private sector and civil society for the good of London’s communities, and ensuring that life skills are shared and developed through volunteering.
To date, Team London has a database of 126,970 volunteers, works with 3500 charities, has engaged with over 36,500 young people and over 2,100 schools. To date the Sport Team has invested £25 million in a range of sports projects across London. This has leveraged more than £35 million of external investment from other organisations.
The Team London programme helps deliver the Mayor’s priorities to work with communities and civil society groups across London to encourage active participation in community and civic life, supporting Londoners of all ages to volunteer and take action to improve London. The team is building strong partnerships between the public, private and third sectors, enabling Londoners to have access to the skills needed both personally and within the economy and contributing to the corporate social responsibility and philanthropy objectives of London’s businesses.
Team London is a delivery agent for the Careers and Enterprise Company in the London Enterprise Advisor Network and has matched funding from the #Iwill/Step Up to Serve campaign administered by the National Lottery. It also works in partnership with supporting businesses and voluntary and community sector organisations across London including London Plus, London Funders and other key civil society partners.
Much of the work in 19/20 will continue to build on the success of previous years. Programmes such as Team London Ambassadors will continue to support Londoners and visitors alike. Our Team London Young Ambassadors will continue connecting young Londoners with their communities through social action, and young Londoners will again be supported through #Iwill/Thrive London grants which provide funding to organisations who deliver Youth Social Actions projects which target mental health for young Londoners.
Sport Unites
For Sport Unites, we will provide funding and support for individuals and organisations across London that use, or wish to use, sport and physical activity as a means of (i) improving social integration and (ii) increasing participation in terms of both quantity and quality of experience, to enhance Londoners’ physical and mental health and wellbeing.
We will also invest in workstreams of ‘enabling’ activity to provide additional support to initiatives funded under the other themes of Sport Unites, to include: training and support for the paid and volunteer community sport workforce; investment in ‘sport tech’ to help address physical challenges to activity in London in innovative ways; providing guidance and leadership to the sector in sport for social integration, helping all those involved learn from what works, and what doesn’t; and conducting robust monitoring and evaluation, as well as building the capacity of those we fund to improve their capability and confidence in providing evidence of their impact.
The Sport Team’s work contributes to Mayoral priorities in addressing five key strategic social issues that may form a challenge and a barrier to those Londoners or groups of Londoners most in need of our programmes. These are inactivity, mental health, serious youth violence, social isolation, and social mixing. In tackling these issues the team works closely with external partners such as London Sport, Comic Relief, and Laureus Sport for Good, and with GLA colleagues such as Team London; and ensures that its efforts and direction align closely with other GLA statutory strategies for which the Mayor is responsible – such as health inequalities, transport, planning, environment, culture, housing, and economic development policy – to ensure that the Mayor has a cohesive approach to tackling London’s problems and improving Londoners’ lives.
Supporting existing programmes and developing new programmes
In order to ensure success in future years we must also evolve, develop and introduce programmes. Because these projects are new, the detailed expenditure and delivery plans will be set out in an ADD/DD for approval by the AD/ED (subject to the Mayor agreeing the delegation).
This MD seeks approval for total expenditure in 2019/20 of up to £931,000 at a net cost to the GLA of £891,000 (provided that £40,000 of external funding can be secured). Expenditure exceeding £891,000 will only be committed/incurred if such external funding is secured.
2.3 The context, outcomes and allocation of funding is detailed in the table below:
Under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority, the GLA must have ‘due regard’ of the need to:
• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; and
• Advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not.
Equal opportunities are enshrined within Team London and Sport’s programmes. Team London and Sport volunteering projects aim to ensure that all Londoners can access volunteering opportunities and indeed by doing so support other Londoners equally throughout the city.
Our projects particularly promote equal life chances; reducing barriers to social mobility, demonstrating improvements in social integration and effective community engagement. This will involve working with young people, under-represented and disconnected Londoners to connect them, through volunteering, with education, training and the world of work.
We have commissioned research to look at the barriers and challenges involved in getting Londoners to participate in volunteering. This is to support our work on Reward and Recognition and ensure that we structure our volunteering and social action programmes in a way that is as appealing and accessible as possible.
The programme will specifically target young people with protected characteristics including race and sexual orientation. A key goal of this programme is to advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. In particular it will target young Londoners from more diverse and deprived backgrounds who might experience significant barriers to participating in social action and volunteering, look at how to overcome these barriers and motivate and reward young people in ways that support them to grow.
Our work also embraces London’s diversity by connecting Londoners from a variety of demographical and geographical backgrounds together in support of commons causes. In addition we recognise volunteers from every area in London through our Awards ceremony.
Team London has targeted itself with growing the numbers of volunteers aged 59+ in the capital, and with enabling young people from diverse and deprived background to become involved in volunteering and social action.
The Team London programme will provide flexibility to those who have specific needs such as a disability or special educational needs, by ensuring that any content and delivery is adapted to meet different needs and where required, support equipment will be made available. Physical access to learning will be considered and arrangements will be made where required.
- Key risks and issues
- Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities
The Team London and Sport 2019/20 work programme contributes to the implementation and delivery of multiple statutory and non-statutory strategies. More details as is as follows:
- Working with communities and civil society groups across London to encourage active participation in community and civic life. That means supporting Londoners of all ages to volunteer and to take action to improve our city, this links to the recommendations in the Culture Strategy and the Sport Strategy;
- Encouraging more Londoners to get involved in volunteering for, and connecting with, others in their community, supporting the aims and objectives of the Social Integration Strategy and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy;
- Building strong partnerships between the private sector, public and voluntary agencies;
- Pro-business: supporting CSR and philanthropy objectives in London;
- Inspiring young people to foster valuable life skills by becoming active citizens in their local area, and bringing communities together in a way that is now more important than ever, building on the recommendations in the Skills Strategy;
- Supporting #LondonIsOpen; welcoming tourists, enhancing major events;
- Ensure that Londoners can access opportunities equally, including the knowledge and skills to participate in civic society and progress in education and in work including careers education and increased employer encounters;
- Aligning with the Economic Development Strategy by helping to improve the health of Londoners, in particular by providing increased opportunities for low-income Londoners, and helping prepare young people for employment through community sports initiatives and the work of youth organisations;
- Helping reduce health inequalities by working with Sport Unites in all aspects of programme delivery, working with Healthy Schools London; taking actions to support children achieve and maintain a healthy weight, with focused support for communities with high childhood obesity rates; and supporting initiatives to help people engage with each other, build skills, create new networks and take part in locally led activity, linking to the Health Inequalities strategy;
- Providing non-medical, community-based activities that people could be referred to for improved health and wellbeing (social prescribing); and
- Working with community organisations, the grassroots sport sector, London Sport and other strategic partners to ensure that diversity, inclusion and social integration are important principles of the new sport programme and strategy.
- Impact Assessments and consultations
We consult relevant groups and stakeholders when undertaking any new programmes e.g. the SkillUP programme researched through the Foundation for Social Improvement the development requirements of small charities in order to influence workshops and modules offered which would be of most use and relevance to the small charity sector.
There is an established Advisory Board for Team London to ensure we have the voice of all relevant parties shaping the future of the programme to ensure it is relevant, efficient and delivering the best volunteering-related outcomes for Londoners.
The Mayor’s strategy for sport was subject to a three month consultation exercise with stakeholder organisations and the public. The Sport Team also commissioned a series of independently facilitated workshops to consult community organisations about key issues raised in the draft strategy and our plans to address them. More than 100 organisations responded, and the strategy was revised in light of their comments.
It is a key principle of the Sport Unites programme that local communities will be empowered to shape and influence investment decisions and priorities. The programme works with a wide range of people, groups and organisations, often in partnership; and offers different types and sizes of grants, including those which help organisations build capacity by developing their workforce; easy-to-access small grants to support local grassroots providers, and larger ones for longer projects. All grants are subject to robust assessment, with monitoring and evaluation conducted at all levels from project to programme. A key outcome for the programme will be understanding what works, what doesn’t, and why – to help shape investment decisions as we go along and in the future.
Approval is being sought for expenditure of up to £931,000 on the Team London and Sports Work Programme for 2019-20, and receipt of £40,000 in external income to support this programme.
The net cost to the GLA is £891,000. Of this amount, £841,000 will be funded from Team London’s budget for 2019-20, and the balance of £50,000 for the Community Sport work, will be funded from the Sport Unites Programme budget for 2019-20.
The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the activity in respect of which approval is sought may be considered to be facilitative of and conducive to the exercise of the GLA’s general powers to undertake such activity as may be considered to promote social development in Greater London and have complied with the GLA’s related statutory duties to:
(a) Pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people;
(b) Consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom; and
(c) Consult with appropriate bodies.
To the extent that expenditure proposed:
(a) Amounts to the provision of grant funding as a contribution to related third party project costs and not a payment for services to be provided, officers must ensure that the proposed funding is disbursed in a fair and transparent manner in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code and a funding agreement is put in place between and executed by the GLA and any proposed recipient(s) before any commitment to provide the funding is made; and
(b) Is to be incurred on the procurement of works, services or supplies, officers must ensure that the works, services or supplies are procured in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code and that appropriate contract documentation is put in place and executed by the successful bidder(s) and the GLA before the commencement of any works, services or supplies.
In any event, officers must ensure that no reliance is placed upon an estimated/forecast external funding until legally binding arrangements are in place with the funder(s) in question and they are content that the GLA can comply with any conditions applicable to the provision of such funding.
In taking the decisions requested, the mayor must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Mayor should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report.
Signed decision document
MD2426 Team London & Community Sport Work Programme 2019/20