MD3130 New Deal for Young People (NDYP) Round 3 Investment

1.1.    Many young Londoners are facing challenges or disadvantages that can negatively affect their development and threaten their future life chances, health and happiness. Whilst London’s growth brings opportunity, it can also mask inequality, reduce engagement and increase perceptions of fear. The focus of the NDYP mission is targeting the most disadvantaged young Londoners.
1.2.    Young people, professionals and a growing evidence base all emphasise how important and influential a good quality mentor can be, and the difference they can make to a young person’s life. But approaches to mentoring can vary significantly across London, and not all delivery is as high-quality as it should be. Within NDYP, mentoring is defined as any high-quality youth activity that builds a trusted and positive relationship with a young person over time. A good mentor uses that trust to motivate and equip a young person to change their lives – and, in so doing, support the development of skills, coping strategies, confidence, and the creation of social networks and opportunity.
1.3.    By focusing on mentoring for the most disadvantaged young Londoners, NDYP aims to grow and develop this important area of the youth and community sector, and ensure that as many young people as possible can benefit from high-quality mentoring support. 
1.4.    In August 2022, under cover of DD2601 (through delegated authority as approved in MD2945, March 2022), the Executive Director of Communities and Skills, and the Executive Director of Resources, approved expenditure of £23.625m to deliver the NDYP mission. This included a contribution of up to £16.625m towards the Collaborative Action for Recovery (CAR) and up to £5m investment in existing and effective City Hall mentoring activity that can be scaled.
1.5.    In September 2022 the CAR was renamed as Propel, a pan London funding collaborative facilitated by London Funders and supported by funders that included Bloomberg, City Bridge Trust, Mayor of London, and the National Lottery Community Fund and London Legal Support Trust. The Propel Application portal opened to funding applications for civil society groups aligned to the New Deal for Young People, Robust Safety Net and Building Stronger Communities recovery missions in October 2022 with first grants awarded in April 2023. All grant funding for this round occurred through aligned funding. 
1.6.    Through the first Propel funding opportunity there were over 170 applications for mentoring activities under the New Deal for Young People. Following a robust assessment process by City Hall officers and young people in April 2023 over £10m of funding was approved to fund 27 organisations to deliver mentoring support to over 11,000 disadvantaged young people from April 2023 – March 2025. 
1.7.    This Mayoral Decision (MD) sets out the GLA’s proposed £10m expenditure towards Round 3 of the NDYP, including associated management and delivery costs, to invest in quality mentoring programmes for disadvantaged young people, through Propel (formerly the CAR). It also proposes the transfer of up to £815,000 to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) for the additional delivery of two programmes: the Violence Reduction Unit’s (VRU’s) MyEnds, and MOPAC’s Harm and Adverse Experience Network (HAVEN). 
1.8.    This investment will fund mentoring support grants that will contribute to the NDYP mission aim that 100,000 disadvantaged young people will have access to a mentor; and all young Londoners will have access to quality local youth activities. 
1.9.    The NDYP mission has so far committed investment of over £32m in Round 1 and 2 funded activities (MD2800, MD2885, MD2945 and DD2601). Combined with wider NDYP City Hall activity, the planned reach of NDYP is that just over 93,000 disadvantaged young people will have access to a mentor by the end of 2024. Expenditure of up to £10m to deliver Round 3 of the NDYP, and the transfer of up to £815,000 to MOPAC, will help ensure that the target of 100,000 disadvantaged young Londoners is exceeded. 
1.10.    Delegation (without the need for a further decision form) for detailed expenditure plans for allocation of up to £10m NDYP Round 3 investment is requested, due to the short time frames remaining to achieve NDYP mission aims by December 2024, and the variety and complexity of partnerships involved in delivery. Round 3 will be launched for applications in June 2023. To ensure transparency, accountability and fairness in the delegated decision process, the following actions will be undertaken: 
•    strict adherence to the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code 
•    a clear audit trail will be recorded, evidencing the need and rationale behind decisions 
•    publication of opportunities through required channels, and announcement of awards on the GLA website 
•    updates on delivery, decision and progress will be delivered in quarterly performance and finance reports, shared with the London Assembly. 
1.11.    Approval is therefore sought for:
•    expenditure of up to £10m to deliver Round 3 of the NDYP to grant fund quality mentoring programmes, and associated management and delivery costs, to organisations who successfully apply through the Propel portal for funding. This is made up of £7m new investment, and £3m reallocated from planned spend approved in DD2601.
•    the transfer of up to £815,000 from the GLA to MOPAC in 2023-24, in accordance with section 121 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, comprising:
    up to £750,000 to extend delivery of the VRU MyEnds programme
    up to £65,000 to extend the MOPAC HAVEN mentoring programme 
•    delegation of authority to the Executive Director of Good Growth to approve the process, timeline and structure for detailed expenditure plans for allocation of up to £10m NDYP Round 3 investment, without the need for a further decision form, with all decisions to be made in collaboration with the Senior Responsible Officer for the NDYP mission
•    delegation of authority to the Executive Director of Good Growth of all authority previously delegated to the Executive Director of Communities and Skills and the Executive Director of Resources under MD2945 (including as a consequence all authority delegated to the Executive Director of Communities and Skills under DD2601), with all decisions to be made in collaboration with the Senior Responsible Officer for the NDYP mission.
1.12.    The activity proposed in this MD is detailed in sections 1.13 to 1.32 below.
Approval of £10m investment in Round 3 of the NDYP through Propel
1.13.    DD2601 approved expenditure of £16.625m aligned with the CAR (now called Propel), including: award of infrastructure grant to London Funders to develop and deliver structure and process for both aligned and pooled funding, of up to £402k; ‘Deliver and Develop’ mentoring support grants of up to £6.223m; and pooled funding of up to £10m, to develop longer-term approaches to quality mentoring and system change across London’s youth sector.
1.14.    The £10m of current investment in mentoring programmes, through the first Propel funding opportunity, is made up of the original £6.223m for ‘Deliver and Develop’ grants; and £4m that was redistributed from the up-to-£10m allocated for longer-term pooled funding, as approved under DD2601 by the Executive Director of Communities and Skills using the powers previously delegated to him by the Mayor.
1.15.    Due to higher-than-expected business rate returns, the GLA 2023-24 budget identified an additional £7m for investment, to be used as part of Round 3 of  NDYP. This investment will ensure the mayoral ambition that 100,000 disadvantaged young people will have access to a mentor by the end of 2024 can be achieved; and further increase the quality, quantity and sustainability of the sector. 
1.16.    Progress towards the 100,000 target is well underway and, as of June 2023, over 50,000 young people have already accessed mentoring. In addition through pre-programmed delivery (that is delivery already funded but not yet delivered) officers are confident that in excess of 93,000 young people will have accessed mentoring by the end of 2024. To ensure that the 100,000 target is met, and to allow for any potential variance in pre-programmed delivery, a third round of NDYP funding is essential.  
1.17.    This decision therefore seeks approval to invest this £7m to deliver Round 3 of the NDYP (from overall expenditure of £10m on quality mentoring programmes for disadvantaged young people), through the Propel application portal. The remaining £3m of this expenditure will be redistributed from the original allocation of up to £10m pooled funding, as agreed in DD2601, to meet the immediate demand for mentoring support for disadvantaged young people.
1.18.    Investment of the £10m in Round 3 of the NDYP will adhere to the key NDYP principles and definitions of mentoring delivery, as set out below:
•    building a trusted relationship over time (the length of time is not fixed and must be responsive to the needs of the young person – but as relationships take time to form, the NDYP mission view is that longer-term is better)
•    using trust to build skills and opportunity for change (the young person’s journey should be measurable)
•    be high quality (encouraging development, adoption and alignment with the standards within the mentoring framework).
1.19.    Importantly, all funding recipients within Round 3 must commit to completing the mentoring framework; only high-quality mentoring activity will be funded. The process for appraisal will vary slightly, dependent on funding mode, but will include the following:
•    the activity is fully completed, and self-assessment through the mentoring framework is carried out
•    recent evidence (within 18 months) is collected and stored
•    the activity meets minimum-quality expectation of ‘good’ or ‘excellent practice’ for the relevant core indicators 
•    the activity shows ‘developing practice’ as a minimum for the relevant non-core indicators 
•    no applications showing ‘undeveloped practice’ on the relevant core indicators will be funded 
•    mentoring framework responses will be interrogated at interview stage, with more detailed spot checks/appraisal of evidence samples undertaken before formal award. 
1.20.    The investment of the £10m, in Round 3 of the NDYP, will enable the GLA to continue         funding a coordinated London mentoring programme. The grants will:
•    focus on mentoring, and include capacity for rapid and high-yield delivery (likely with a minimum reach of over 250 young people over the grant’s lifetime) 
•    be individually awarded at values of between £50k and £1.25m per annum
•    be delivery-focused on disadvantaged young people aged between 10 and 24
•    be awarded to civil-society organisations working collaboratively with other civil-society organisations and public-sector partners
•    be awarded for two years, with the expectation of evolving into a longer-term funding (through a pooled process).
1.21.    Applications will be submitted through the London Funders Propel portal but will be         assessed and ultimately awarded by the GLA. A core focus of assessment will be ensuring the quality of mentoring activity, and this application and assessment process is below:
•    grant applications will respond to a question from young people; this response will also be assessed by young people
•    grant applications will explicitly state how many disadvantaged young people will have access to a mentor in the life of the grant award
•    grant applications will respond to question on the outcomes and impact of mentoring
•    organisations will be expected to have completed the mentoring framework prior to assessment; this will be quality-assured as outlined in paragraph 1.18
•    interviews with shortlisted applicants will occur (allowing us to assess quality within the completed mentoring framework, and to undertake wider due diligence)
•    the decision-making process may include review by an advisory group of collaborative funders, but the ultimate decision for contract award will remain with the GLA 
•    all providers will adopt NDYP branding, ethos and outcome-reporting expectations.
1.22.    A fixed number of awards has not been set, to allow the flexibility to award grants based on merit/expected outcomes. However, based on the first Propel funding opportunity, it is anticipated that between 25 and 30 grants will be awarded, reaching approximately 10,000 disadvantaged young people.
1.23.    Through previous funding rounds officers have developed a sophisticated understanding of the costs required to deliver high quality mentoring. This is supported by external studies into cost effectiveness of mentoring, for example, a Youth Endowment Fund review of mentoring programmes found that cost per mentee ranges from £845 to £3000, for programmes that ranged in duration from six months to two years. NDYP cost per head analysis further shows that individual programme cost varies dependant on a number of factors including:
•    whether professional or volunteer mentors are used
•    delivery model and intensity of support
•    needs of the young person.
1.24.    Given the high-level of needs of many of the young people we are supporting through the NDYP, a wide variety of mentoring delivery models are required to ensure successful impact. Delivery model and costings may for example vary between intensive professional youth worker mentoring, to support a young person at a particularly complex stage of their lives, to a less intensive longer-term relationship with a local volunteer mentor. This variance, combined with our commitment to only fund high quality delivery means that an estimated funding round average of approximately £1000 per young person mentored, to reach 10,000 young people, is considered by officers as good value for money and accurately reflects reasonable costs of delivering mentoring models in London.  
Transfer of additional funding, of up to £815,000, to MOPAC
1.25.    DD2601 also approved up to £5m investment in existing mentoring activity that has demonstrated effective, high-quality or innovative approaches towards mentoring and can be scaled. 
1.26.    This MD seeks approval for the transfer of up to £815,000 (of the £5m investment approved in DD2601) to MOPAC in 2023-24 for additional delivery of the HAVEN programme (£65,000) and the VRU MyEnds programme (up to £750,000) to provide access to mentoring support to disadvantaged young Londoners.
1.27.    Between January and March 2023, a review of existing City Hall mentoring programmes was undertaken. Expressions of interest were invited from projects and programmes that could demonstrate proven quality and scale up quickly to reach disadvantaged young people, including:
•    mentoring support for young people at risk of exclusion; and/or who experience violence and/or involvement in crime
•    mentoring support for young people transitioning across key school years 
•    mentoring for young people experiencing social isolation
•    mentoring to improve social, emotional and mental health of the most disadvantaged young Londoners. 
1.28.    Following the expression-of-interest process, 19 grant/contract variations were approved for scaling up City Hall projects for up to two years (January 2023 to January 2025). These variations total £3,942,446, which will provide access to mentoring for over 6,500 young people.
1.29.    One of these approved variations, for £65,000, was for additional delivery of the MOPAC HAVEN programme. This aims to provide mentoring support to boys in youth custody who have experienced victimisation, to help them to cope and recover in 2023-24. This MD therefore seeks approval to transfer £65,000 to MOPAC to extend delivery of the HAVEN programme in 2023-24. 
1.30.    The VRU’s (MOPAC) place-based MyEnds programme, launched in April 2021, provides support and funding for communities to lead and deliver interventions across eight London neighbourhoods affected by high and sustained levels of violence. MyEnds focuses on interventions for families and young people, including access to one-to-one and group-mentoring activities. 
1.31.    MyEnds is closely aligned with the New Deal for Young People. Young people are at the heart of the programme. Their input is integral to the community networks, and they are central to the projects developed and delivered.  These focus on positive and accessible youth activities and quality mentoring which is core to the NDYP.
1.32.    Through Round 1 of the NDYP MD2800 approved £1.5m to support two MyEnds projects to deliver over two years. Following a successful pilot, the programme has been extended until 30 June 2024 (following approval through PCD 1149, in May 2022). The programme has successfully developed and delivered locally informed and relevant interventions to reduce violence and is becoming a lifeline to many young Londoners. To date over 7,000 young people have benefited from one-to-one and group-mentoring support.
1.33.    This MD therefore seeks approval to transfer £750,000 to MOPAC to contribute to the extension of the MyEnds programme until June 2024.
1.34.    MOPAC and the VRU will continue to programme-manage the HAVEN and MyEnds programmes, and report to the NDYP team on a quarterly basis on project performance, including numbers of young people reached, outcomes for those young people and expenditure.
Delegated authority to the Executive Director of Good Growth
1.35.    MD2945 approved delegation from the Mayor to the Executive Director of Communities and Skills, and the Executive Director of Resources, to approve detailed expenditure plans for £23.625m investment. DD2601 delegated authority to the Executive Director to approve, without the need for a further decision form, the redistribution of unused funds within the decision. All decisions will be made in collaboration with the Senior Responsible Officer for the NDYP recovery mission. 
1.36.    Since approval of M2945 and DD2601, the Executive Director of Communities and Skills has, on behalf of the GLA, become a Trustee of London Funders, which coordinates and administers Propel (formerly the CAR). Therefore, this MD also seeks approval to transfer the delegation of authority in MD2945 from the Executive Director of Skills and Communities and the Executive Director of Resources, with regards to investment in Propel through London Funders, to the Executive Director of Good Growth; and to transfer authority from the Executive Director of Skills and Communities to the Executive Director of Good Growth to approve, without the need for a further decision form, the redistribution of unused funds within DD2601. 
Past approvals
1.37.    The table below sets out past approvals for activity related to proposals in this MD. These approvals are historical and do not overlap with approvals in this decision document. The table shows related prior activity. 

Approval of £10m investment in Round 3 of the NDYP through Propel
2.1.    The NDYP mission commits to ensuring that, by 2024, 100,000 disadvantaged young people have access to a mentor; and all young Londoners have access to quality local youth activities. The mission aims to improve the life chances and opportunities by:
•    enabling more disadvantaged young people to benefit from quality mentoring and youth activities 
•    improving the quality of mentoring by building capacity of the youth sector 
•    increasing strategic investment in London’s youth and mentoring activities
•    empowering system change and sustainability within the youth sector.
2.2.    Mentoring is about building a trusted and positive relationship with a young person over time. A good mentor uses that trust to motivate and equip a young person to change their lives; and in so doing, to support the development of skills, coping strategies and confidence. The skill and drive required to build transformational trusted relationships is a fundamental principle of high-quality youth and community work. The impacts of high-quality mentoring on disadvantaged young people will be demonstrated through quarterly impact reporting. 
2.3.    Projects funded through Round 3 of the NDYP will report on the impact of and outcomes from their project for young people, aligned to the VRU outcomes framework. This is exemplified in the table below:

2.4.    Projects funded through Round 3 of the NDYP will meet the core priorities set out below:
•    Improve the quality of mentoring and/or youth activities – the NDYP will ensure that young people are receiving the best-quality mentoring support and/or youth activities, and will help to build the capacity of the youth sector. Organisations will be required to sign up to and implement the Mentoring Framework, an agile tool being developed to help organisations build on their best practice for mentoring and personalised support. 
•    Target young people facing the biggest challenges – including those at risk of exclusion and/or involvement in crime. Such disadvantaged young people include the following (this list is illustrative, not exhaustive):
    young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
    those excluded from school or college 
    those associated with gangs or impacted by exploitation 
    those who are not in education, employment or training 
    those experiencing, or who have been impacted by, domestic violence and abuse 
    young refugees and asylum-seekers 
    young people with a social worker (looked-after children, those under a Child Protection Plan, children in need and care leavers) 
    young people from low-income families/living in poverty or significantly affected by the cost-of-living crisis
    young parents
    refugees
    young carers
    young people from Gypsy, Romany or Traveller communities.
•    Support the sustainability of the youth sector – NDYP will support the youth sector to become sustainable and provide long-term support and investment, rather than one-off or short-term funding. On top of decades of funding cuts, organisations providing vital support for young people are seeing increased demand for their services. Investment through in Round 3 should help further build the capacity and sustainability of the youth sector.
2.5.    We anticipate funding between 25 and 30 organisations to deliver mentoring projects which will reach over 10,000 young people over two years (December 2023 to December 2025).
    Transfer of additional funding, of up to £815,000, to MOPAC 
2.6.    The HAVEN programme is a specialist mentoring service for boys in custody who have experienced victimisation and trauma. The mentoring takes a trauma-informed approach to supporting the boys to understand, and to cope and recover from, experiences of victimisation. Mentors also signpost to formal victim-support services, other services in custody and the community to meet the needs of the child/young person. The mentoring is provided through the gate four to five weeks pre-release, and four to five weeks post-release (where mentors have capacity, this may be extended according to the needs of the child).
2.7.    It is anticipated that £65,000 funding will support the HAVEN project to reach between 60 and 80 boys from April 2023 to April 2024. Outcomes include:
•    improved wellbeing – measured using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale 
•    improved thinking skills and behaviour – measured through case studies and reporting by staff and the young people 
•    increased use of victim support services by children who have been in custody – measured by referrals by the mentoring service to victim support services 
•    reduced violent incidents within the YOI – based on records of violent incidents on prison systems.
2.8.    The VRU’s place-based MyEnds programme provides support and funding for communities to lead and deliver interventions across eight London neighbourhoods affected by high and sustained levels of violence. MyEnds focuses on interventions for families and young people, including access to one-to-one and group-mentoring activities.

2.9.    To date, over 7,000 young people have benefited from one-to-one and group activities, including mentoring. The investment, of up to £750,000, in MyEnds will contribute to the extension of the programme until July 2024. It is anticipated that up to 4,000 young people will benefit from the programme in 2023-24.

3.1.    Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 (the Equality Act), as a public authority the Mayor must have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, and any conduct that is prohibited by or under the Equality Act; and to advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations, between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. 
3.2.    Activity and programmes under the Mayor’s NDYP mission will provide support to disadvantaged children and young people. This includes young people with protected characteristics, and those who are more vulnerable. Examples of disadvantaged groups that the NDYP programmes will be particularly focussed on include young people with SEND; young refugees and asylum seekers; young people with a social worker; young care leavers; and those who are risk of exclusion, or who have been excluded, from school or college. 
3.3.    The Propel collaboration, through which NDYP Round 3 applications will be submitted, is founded on several guiding principles to which all funders are signed up and are held accountable. Several of these are equity-focused, including the ‘equitable’ principle that has been selected to ensure a focus on unlearning old ways of working, and awareness of biases and lenses, to ensure the design and decision-making processes are inclusive and reflective of London’s diversity.
3.4.    London’s over two million children and young people (those aged 19 or under) face an unequal start in life, and this population is growing. London has the highest rate of child poverty in England (after housing costs are taken into account) and rates are expected to increase in coming years. Poorer children are more likely to underachieve at school; be unemployed; and have lower incomes. Poverty is significantly worse in Black-Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani families, and more than 50 per cent of families with a disabled child live at the margins of poverty. This has all been exacerbated by the current cost-of-living crisis. 
3.5.    Young Londoners have lost tens of millions of pounds in funding for youth services since 2011. Informal, non-statutory services have an important preventative role to play. Getting good support to young people in their teenage years is vital – especially to support the most disadvantaged young people. Youth services are vital to young people who have been left behind or marginalised. These services enable them to reach their potential and play a valuable role in helping them avoid being sucked into crime. MOPAC’s data on knife crime demonstrates that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic young people are over-represented as both victims and perpetrators; and are overwhelmingly male, with many and complex vulnerabilities.

Subsidy control
4.1.    Consideration of the seven subsidy control principles will be undertaken in relation to each grant the GLA considers through the Propel portal. 
Key risks
4.2.    The key risks are identified in the table below:

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities
4.3.    Activity directly contributes to the NDYP mission that, by the end of 2024, all young people in need will be entitled to a personal mentor, and all young Londoners will have access to quality local youth activities.
4.4.    The Mayor has made a commitment to build on the work of the Young Londoners Fund, and the collaboration forged between leading funders during the pandemic, to create a longer-term, multimillion-pound fund to support young people. Committing additional resources through Propel will support this commitment. 
4.5.    Propel’s emphasis on developing funding programmes focused on improving systemic and long-term issues will provide a much-needed source of sustainable support to voluntary, community and civil-society organisations supporting hundreds of thousands of young Londoners.
4.6.    In 2018, the GLA commissioned a review looking at the role of City Hall and its approach to giving. This culminated in the report, “Harnessing the capital’s giving: What is the role of the Mayor and Greater London Authority in enabling civic philanthropy?” (September 2018). One of the key areas of opportunity identified for the Mayor and the GLA was increased and more strategic funder collaboration. 
Consultations and impact assessments 
4.7.    The NDYP mission is a partnership of the GLA, London Councils, and the voluntary and community sector. The co-chairs of the NDYP mission have worked with statutory and voluntary-sector partners across London in the development of the mission. They will continue to ensure that the delivery and related funded activity meets the needs of young people who face the biggest challenges; and that it supports the sustainability and transformation of the wider youth sector. 
4.8.    The youth sector, and young people, have been engaged to help shape the NDYP mission, and will continue to ensure young people’s voices are front and centre of recovery. Several online roundtables with the voluntary and community sector have been held with organisations identified as delivering best practice mentoring in London. This is in addition to a roundtable with young people to hear their thoughts on the biggest challenges to mentoring, and what good mentoring looks like. These engagement activities are key to ensuring the programme of work is co-produced with the sector, and best supports organisations working with disadvantaged young people. Over 270 youth professionals were engaged in recent consultation (July and August) on development of the mentoring framework.
4.9.    Tunde Olayinka, Executive Director, Community and Skills, is co-opted to the London Funders Board as a GLA representative. There are no other conflicts of interest to declare for any of the officers involved in the drafting or clearance of this MD.
 

Approval is sought for:
•    the expenditure of up to £10m to deliver Round 3 of the New Deal for Young People (NDYP), to fund quality mentoring programmes for disadvantaged young people, and associated management and delivery costs, through the Propel application portal. This is made up of £7m new investment, and £3m reallocated from planned spend approved in DD2601.
•    the transfer of up to £815,000 from the GLA to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) in the financial year 2023-24, in accordance with section 121 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, comprising:
o    up to £750,000 to extend delivery of the Violence Reduction Unit’s MyEnds programme
o    up to £65,000 to extend the MOPAC Harm and Adverse Experience Network mentoring programme
•    delegation of authority to the Executive Director of Good Growth to approve the process, timeline and structure for:
o    detailed expenditure plans for allocation of up to £10m NDYP Round 3 investment, without the need for a further decision form
o    reallocation of delegated authority, as approved under MD2945 and DD2601, from the Executive Director of Communities and Skills, for decisions related to investment through Propel and London Funders.

5.2.    This expenditure approved within this decision will be contained within the NDYP Core Mission  Fund Programme within the Children and Young Londoners Unit.
5.3.        Funding for this programme is held within an earmarked reserve. Budget to match expectation and monitored on this basis. At each year-end there will be a reserve drawdown to match actual expenditure.

The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the decisions requested of the Mayor concern the exercise of the Authority’s general powers, falling within the Authority’s statutory powers to do such things considered to further or that are facilitative of, or conducive or incidental to, the promotion of economic development and wealth creation, social development or 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:
•    pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people
•    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
•    consult with appropriate bodies.
6.2.     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; to advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sex, 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.
6.3.     The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the funding will be used for grant-funding and the commissioning of activities. In determining whether a procurement (contract) or grant award (funding agreement) is the most appropriate route for the activities described above, officers should have due regard to the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code and seek advice from Transport for London (TfL) Procurement and Commercial and TfL Legal if required.
6.4.    To the extent a contribution of funding will amount to the provision of grant funding and not payment for services, section 12.3 of the Authority’s Contracts and Funding Code provides that decisions to award grant-funding should generally be made based on the outcome of a transparent, competitive application process. To this end, the officers must ensure that any grant-funding is awarded following such a process. Officers must also ensure that appropriate grant-funding agreements are put in place and executed by the successful recipient and the GLA before the commitment of funding.
6.5.    To the extent that any of the activities described above are commissioned, the services or supplies required must be procured by TfL Procurement and Commercial, who will determine the detail of the procurement strategy to be adopted in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code. Officers must also ensure that appropriate contract documentation is put in place and executed by the successful bidder(s) and the GLA before the commencement of the services.
6.6.    Officers have sought approval of a £815,000 revenue grant from the GLA to MOPAC pursuant to section 121(1) of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (the “Act”). The officers are reminded that, in accordance with section 121(3) of the Act, no conditions may be imposed upon MOPAC’s use of the grant other than that the grant must not be used for capital expenditure. Furthermore, in accordance with section 121(4) of the Act, MOPAC must apply the grant towards meeting revenue expenditure for the purposes of or in connection with the discharge of its functions.