MD2845 Resilience Pilot Funding for the LRF from MHCLG

1.1. To support the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy launched in March by the Cabinet Office, MHCLG is exploring ways to help to strengthen the roles and responsibilities of Local Resilience Forums (LRFs). This will be part of the development of the National Resilience Strategy, due later in 2021.

1.2. Consequently, MHCLG has launched a funding pilot for £7.5m for all LRFs. London’s allocation of this total is £245,000. The funding has been allocated to the London Resilience Forum – chaired on the Mayor’s behalf by the Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience. The forum has agreed the funding will be managed on its behalf by the GLA Resilience team, and in liaison with the London Resilience Partnership and London Resilience Group.

1.3. Funding is currently intended as a one-off, and available for the current 2021-22 financial year (with written permission from MHCLG to span into the 2022-23 financial year if necessary). The outcomes resulting from this spend will form part of the feedback and reporting to MHCLG and the Cabinet Office.

1.4. The London Resilience Forum met on 17 June 2021 and discussed proposals for the spend. The Forum agreed the following, all of which is in line with MHCLG objectives (set out in section 2.1, below):

• Funding will be used for new, innovative work that would not otherwise be undertaken. It will not be spent on existing activity.
• Spending will be split between staffing costs and funding for stand-alone pieces of work in order to maximise the benefits for London. This will improve the capacity to manage and enhance resilience, and develop further understanding of future challenges.
• Work will be carried out under two main themes: a ‘Whole society approach to resilience’ (also known as community resilience), which focuses on developing mechanisms for improving the resilience of London’s communities by coordinating links between community organisations, resilience and preparedness; and ‘Data and risk’, which focuses on exploring how London can improve its use of data, information and risk to enhance resilience. Both themes are deemed priorities by MHCLG, further details are included in section 2.1.

1.5. The London Resilience Forum considers community resilience a priority for London. The COVID-19 response has shown the value of engagement with communities and community organisations in advance of any shock event. Given the size, complexity and diversity of London, this work is intended to support activity taking place both through the London Resilience Forum’s Faith Sector and Voluntary Sector Panels, and link closely to communities activity in the GLA and London Councils.

1.6. To deliver this work within the timeframes required, it will be necessary to recruit for two posts – one full-time fixed-term post for a year, and one part-time fixed-term support post for 8 months – total cost £100,000 including on costs and support costs. This covers one grade 10 full-time post which will last for one year (October 2021-September 2022) and 1 grade 6 part time (three days per week) post which will last for eight months (November 2021-June 2022). These posts will be approved through the GLA’s Establishment Control processes.

1.7. The City Resilience Strategy identified the need for better communication with the public on existing risks to London. To support the whole society approach to resilience and address this gap, a stand-alone piece of work on public and community risk communications is needed. This will address how risk information could be shared effectively (at present the main channel is through the London Resilience Partnership portal on the London.gov.uk website). Making this data more accessible to the public would enable better engagement with and understanding of risk, and would consequently improve resilience. The expenditure allocated to this consultancy project is £20,000.

1.8. To support objectives set out in the City Resilience Strategy on community resilience, small amounts of seed funding should be used to help enable the support of grassroots projects that promote resilience at community level. Outputs of these projects would be shared with the wider community resilience audience in the UK and internationally. Work would be undertaken together with other key stakeholders. The expenditure allocated to this is £15,000.

1.9. The data and risk workstream addresses projects identified through the City Resilience Strategy and the London Resilience Forum’s Chronic Incident Review (the review of managing long term emergency response activity in London carried out in spring 2021). Both have identified the use of data, information and risk as key to improving resilience. Work is required to clarify how data and information (including that relating to risk) can be used to understand and improve London’s resilience.

1.10. A consultancy project is required to map the data and information that exists; ascertain how it may be used to understand and improve resilience; and identify data that may be lacking. This will enable better understanding and management of risk, including during emergencies. The total spend on this project is £75,000.

1.11. The City Resilience Strategy identified a need to improve our understanding of the impact of complex cross-sectoral future risks and develop the ability to quantify the cost of risk, so it is possible to recognise the value of preparedness activity. This would support effective future allocation of resources on resilience, and help develop useful methods to identify particularly vulnerable areas or communities. This work would launch once the Cabinet Office has reviewed the National Security Risk Assessment, expected later this year. Scoping work would be undertaken by consultants at a cost of £35,000.

1.12. The spend on a whole society approach to resilience totals £130,000. The spend on risk, information and data totals £115,000. All consultancy projects are anticipated to be launched and completed this financial year; recruitment (or secondment) for the full-time community resilience post will be from October 2021 to September 2022; the part time post will be from November 2021 to June 2022. Written permission has been obtained from MHCLG for continuing the community resilience post into the next financial year (2022-23).

1.13. The consultancy services described above will be procured in accordance with the GLA Contracts and Funding Code.

2.1. The grant has been provided as a non-ringfenced transfer under section 31 of the Local Government Finance Act 2003. MHCLG has set out the following objectives relating to the use of the funding:

• objective 1: to increase LRF capacity, enabling LRFs to recruit strategic resources to address national and local resilience priorities
• objective 2: to build new or enhance LRF capability to address national and local resilience priorities.

2.2. MHCLG expect activities to meet these objectives and/or outcomes to cover:

• strategic personnel to lead LRF activity in support of key national and local priorities
• strengthening data, intelligence and information flows at the local and national levels
• promoting a whole society approach to resilience.

2.3. MHCLG’s intentions for the pilot project are to:

• test the efficacy and impact of HMG funding for LRFs
• identify the challenges and benefits of providing funding and how any risks could be managed
• ensure evidence from this pilot is used to support the wider HMG Resilience Strategy
• ensure this grant does not displace existing funding or in-kind contributions, and focusses on additional strategic and cross-cutting capacity and capability.

2.4. The plans outlined above for spending MHCLG funding are designed to realise a number of benefits for London. The focus on a whole society approach to resilience is intended to deliver the following outputs for London and its communities:

• First, an evidence base to demonstrate to MHCLG that the challenge of coordinating and delivering community resilience for a city the size of London, with its unique diversity and characteristics, would benefit significantly from future long-term funding from central government.
• Second, a series of implementable outputs from the project on risk communications that will help share risk information in an accessible way. This project will also deliver activity set out in the City Resilience Strategy.
• Third, an opportunity for communities to put forward innovative ideas to improve resilience, and receive funding for them. These ideas should shape the current body of evidence for good practice on community-driven resilience-building that can be shared.

2.5. The focus on data and risk is intended to deliver outcomes that will enhance London’s resilience by mapping available (or missing) data to support and improve our understanding of the capital’s resilience. This includes clarifying what further information may be required to improve resilience and preparedness, including for emergency response.

2.6. The intention behind focussing on future risk, and understanding how risk may be quantified, is to broaden the current understanding of future system-wide challenges London may face. Scoping what further work may be necessary, and the value delivered by investment in preparedness, will support future decision-making on resilience against a broader understanding of city-wide challenges.

3.1. London’s overall resilience depends on the resilience of all communities. A significant part of this project is focussed on London’s communities finding ways to develop a whole society approach to resilience. By working with existing London Resilience Partnership panels on faith and communities (which collectively represent many of London’s diverse communities), and with GLA leads on communities and other stakeholders including London Councils, this project aims to strengthen resilience links with all communities.

3.2. A focus on communities and resilience will support better communication and collaboration with London’s communities during any emergency response. It will also improve preparedness for future shocks and stresses.

3.3. The focus on risk is primarily designed to understand where problems may occur in the medium- to long-term that require either an emergency response, or investment in risk management and mitigation for London as a whole. At this stage it is not clearly understood how communities could be disproportionately affected by emergencies – especially during complex cross-cutting events. By undertaking further work on risk, and understanding the benefits of risk mitigation and investment in preparedness, London is likely to be better informed.

4.1. All activity described above will be carried out in collaboration with the London Resilience Partnership, with direction from the London Resilience Forum and other relevant stakeholders. All outputs will be used to inform central government of the need, value and potential costs related to enhancing resilience in London.

4.2. There are no conflicts of interest to note for any of the officers involved in the drafting or clearance of this decision.

4.3. Risks and mitigations:

4.4. The Mayor has set out several priorities, including a commitment to ‘make sure that London continues to be not only prepared for short-term disruptions, but also long-term chronic incidents with reference to the London Resilience Strategy’. The objectives and activity set out in this paper identify ways of helping achieve this.

4.5. This work is closely linked to the London City Resilience Strategy, published in February 2020, which sets out projects intended to improve London’s overall resilience to future shocks and stresses. Activity outlined here will contribute to achieving objectives set out in this strategy.

5.1. Mayoral approval is sought for the proposal agreed by the London Resilience Forum on spending £245,000 resilience pilot funding received from MHCLG in June 2021. The activity as detailed in this decision addresses the twin priorities of community resilience and better use of risk, information, and data to improve London’s resilience in future.

5.2. The details of the expenditure of £245,000 is outlined in section 1 of this decision and the estimate profile of the spend across 2021-22 and 2022-23 is shown in the table below.

5.3. This work will be funded via the grant funding of £245,000 received from MHCLG in June 2021 and therefore any amount to be spent in 2022-23 will be accounted for accordingly with permission from MHCLG to spend the funding into 2022-23. The work will be managed by Resilience team within the Strategy and Communications directorate.

6.1. The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the decisions requested of the Mayor fall within the statutory powers of the Authority to promote and/or to do anything which is facilitative of or conducive or incidental to social development, economic development and wealth creation and improvement of the environment within Greater London and in formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the Authority’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

(c) consult with appropriate bodies.

6.2. In taking the decisions requested of him, 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 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 and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic 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.

6.3. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (the 2004 Act), with its accompanying regulations and guidance, is the framework for civil protection in the UK. Part 1 of the 2004 Act covers local arrangements for civil protection and a framework of roles and responsibilities for local responders. The 2004 Act divides local responders into two categories depending on the extent of their involvement in civil protection work. Category 1 responders, which include the Authority, are those organisations at the core of an emergency response and are subject to the full set of civil protection duties. This includes duties relating to risk assessment, planning, business continuity, cooperation with other responders and communicating with the public.

6.4. The Mayor chairs the London Resilience Forum which ensures effective delivery of those duties under the 2004 Act, which need to be developed in a multi-agency environment. The London Resilience Forum is a means for responders with duties under the 2004 Act collaboratively to discharge their responsibilities. The London Resilience Forum sets the strategy and objectives for the London Resilience Partnership.

Procurement and funding

6.5. Officers must ensure that any external services required for the resilience project (such as the consultancy services referred to in the third decision) be procured in accordance with the Authority’s Contracts and Funding Code (the “Code”) and with the assistance of Transport for London’s procurement team. Furthermore, officers must ensure that appropriate contractual documentation be executed by both the Authority and the relevant contractor prior to the commencement of the required services.

6.6. To the extent that the Authority provides grant funding to a third party in furtherance of the resilience project, the officers are reminded of the need to comply with section 12 of the Code and to ensure that an appropriate grant agreement be put in place between the Authority and the recipient, before any of the funding be paid.

Creation of posts

6.7. Under the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (as amended), the Head of Paid Service (the “HoPS”) may, after consultation with the Mayor and the Assembly and having regard to the resources available and priorities of the Authority:

(a) appoint such staff as the HoPS considers necessary for the proper discharge of the functions of the Authority (section 67(2))

(b) make such appointments on such terms and conditions as the HoPS thinks fit (section 70(2)).

6.8. Therefore, should this expenditure be approved, the matter should be referred to the HoPS in order that the HoPS may consider creating the two fixed-term posts referred to above.