ADD2733 GLA Land and Property Climate Risk and Resilience

1.1.    The London Climate Resilience Review found that London is under-prepared for the impacts of climate change and called on the Mayor of London to lead by example by embedding adaptation as a cross cutting organisational priority across the GLA’s work and funding (recommendation 3). The Review has further called on the GLA Group and functional bodies to set adaptation plans and measurable targets (recommendation 4). The Mayor of London has accepted the recommendations of the London Climate Resilience Review and committed to work to deliver them.

 
1.2.    The GLA has a key role to play in building capacity on adaptation and climate resilience across London. Leading by example is a clear first step and the GLA Environment and Energy Unit can quickly and effectively support teams across the GLA Group and Functional Bodies to identify climate adaptation actions and support their implementation. Learnings from internal facing work can then be scaled up to support London’s wider public sector, anchor institutions and communities.  

1.3.    The London Climate Resilience Review identified London’s climate budget process as an opportunity to integrate adaptation across the GLA’s work. The GLA Group and Functional Bodies must produce budgets which demonstrate their spending on net zero as well as climate adaptation action. This directly demonstrates how they are tackling emissions and increasing their adaptation to climate change, and the Mayor is committed to this process. Across the GLA Group, processes for net zero climate budgeting and action are more established, and functional bodies have expressed a need for support to advance their climate adaptation action. This includes support to identify adaptation options, selecting actions to take, and how to prioritise and fund these in the short, medium and long term.  

1.4.    In response to the calls for support from functional bodies and the recommendations of the London Climate Resilience Review, the GLA’s Environment and Energy unit are currently developing workstream which will build strategic capacity on climate adaptation across the GLA and London’s wider public sector and lead to accelerated delivery of climate adaptation projects.  Capacity building and support relating to the assessment of climate risks, identification of adaptation options and selection and implementation of adaptation projects are critical to achieving London’s priorities. This is a key priority of the Green and Resilient Mandate which is currently under development. 

1.5.    The Land and Development team within the GLA’s Housing and Land directorate is in the process of developing a net zero carbon and climate mitigation strategy which will outline GLAP’s approach to delivering net zero carbon. This was decided through GLA Land and Property Limited’s (GLAP) delegated authority. This decision seeks approval to provide funding from Environment and Energy’s adaptation budget directly to GLAP to include specialised technical support on adaptation in their procurement for strategy development. The development of this strategy presents a critical window of opportunity to embed climate adaptation to reduce climate risk and increase the climate resilience of GLAP.  
 

2.1.    The overall objective of this work is to support the development of an integrated strategy for GLAP which includes adaptation to climate change as well as climate mitigation resulting in sustainable long term management of key GLA assets. This is a critical step in ensuring that exemplar sites managed by the GLA, including the Royal Docks and Crystal Palace, are adapting well to climate change, boosting London’s climate resilience, and that the Mayor of London is leading by example. 

2.2.    The £50,000 will contribute to the following technical outputs: assessment of current and future climate risks, identification of adaptation measures and a proposed approach or pathway for action. Together these for one comprehensive climate risk assessment and action plan. 

2.3.    The outcomes of this funding are expected to be:  

•    A climate risk review for GLA Land and Development and a stocktake of their current position in relation to climate risks and preparedness. This will include an understanding of their exposure to risk and financial implications.  
•    Identification of a set of suitable adaptation measures across the GLAP portfolio for further consideration. This will include some high level analysis of their costs and benefits. This analysis should go beyond monetary analysis to take into account wider benefits such as heath, greener and biodiversity, social value and equality benefits. 
•    A recommended approach to managing climate risk. This output will consider the two outputs above to set out a pathway for GLAP to manage its climate risk. This will result in the identification of win-win or low-regrets adaptation actions to be implemented immediately. This will result in the identification of both funded and unfunded measures for the GLA’s 2025-26 climate adaptation budgets. 

2.4.    In addition to the specific outcomes as a direct result of the funding set out above, this work will contribute to refining the development of future work programmes by: 

•    upskilling colleagues across the Adaptation team as well as GLA Treasury and Green Finance on providing comparable support to other GLA teams, functional bodies and external partners
•    case studies on identifying climate risk and investing in adaptation actions which can inform other stakeholders across London
•    provide valuable learnings to inform the development of any future capacity building support offered by the GLA’s Environment and Energy unit to London stakeholders on adaptation and climate resilience.
 

3.1.    Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the Mayor and GLA are subject to the public sector equality duty and must have due regard to the need to:

•    eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
•    advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not
•    foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not. 

3.2.    The “protected characteristics” are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and marriage/ civil partnership status. The duty involves having appropriate regard to these matters as they apply in the circumstances, including having regard to the need to: remove or minimise any disadvantage suffered by those who share or is connected to a protected; take steps to meet the different needs of such people; encourage them to participate in public life or in any other activity where their participation is disproportionately low. This can involve treating people with a protected characteristic more favourably than those without one.  

3.3.    Climate risks are not shared equally and action to increase London’s climate resilience must prioritise those most at risk. London’s climate vulnerability mapping shows areas with the greatest environmental risks against social indicators. There is a strong correlation between areas of greatest risk and the proportion of the population that identify as Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME). The London Climate Resilience Review sets out clearly that Londoners who face health inequalities, disabled Londoners and those living in care are at greater risk from climate change impacts. The Review has called for action to adapt London to climate change and increase climate resilience to be as locally led as possible and for Londoners to be engaged in adaptation solutions. 

3.4.    Work to identify and address climate risks across GLAP’s estate will take into account underlying inequalities and work to address environmental injustice by prioritising actions which reduce inequalities. Assessing climate risks across the estate can enable the GLA to build understanding of structural vulnerabilities and the distribution of climate impacts, as well as help to engage with those affected to participate in the adaptation planning and implementation. 

3.5.    GLAP’s estate is primarily located in areas of London and within communities most vulnerable to climate change. Understanding the climate risk of sites and assets in more detail and engaging with local communities and users of the assets on adaptation planning helps contribute to a just transition. To help ensure that communities are protected where possible from climate impacts and benefit from the opportunities the transition presents. 
 

Key Risks and Issues

4.1.    This spend is found to be low risk. It will be deployed to a trusted, internal GLA partner and governed by the GLA’s procurement rules. There are no currently known or foreseen conflicts of interest which would arise from procuring this work. 
Risk: Adaptation team priorities are not met through this action. 

4.2.    This risk is found to be very low. The adaptation team has worked closely with the GLA land and development team to design the activities which will be funded by this budget allocation. A good process for communication, codesign and feedback is in place. This is further strengthened by the climate adaptation budget process. 

Risk: spend does not align with the priorities set out by the current, ongoing, delivery planning process.  
4.3.    This risk is found to be very low. While planning of the Greener and more resilient London mandate is ongoing the overall programme approach and priorities have been agreed. This action supports the missions priority of ‘enabling partners to deliver through funding and capacity building’.   

Links to Mayoral Strategies and Priorities 

4.4.    The London Environment Strategy sets out the aim that “London and Londoners will be resilient to severe weather and longer-term climate change impacts. This will include flooding, heat risk and drought.” The London Climate Resilience Review was commissioned by the Mayor to make clear recommendations to advance this aim. This funding will work to deliver on the London Climate Resilience Review’s recommendations. 

4.5.    In the Mayor’s official response to the London Climate Resilience Review (here) the Mayor has committed to work to deliver the recommendations within the Mayor’s remit. The action set out in this ADD aligns with two of the Review’s key recommendations made directly to the Mayor of London: 

•    Recommendation for the Mayor: Build on work already underway to embed climate adaptation as a cross cutting organisational priority across the GLA’s work and funding, where the GLA has discretion.
•    Recommendation for the Mayor: The GLA and London boroughs’ finance processes should include a set of questions about climate risks to ensure spending is climate resilient, and the GLA Group’s functional bodies should set adaptation plans and measurable targets.

Consultations and impact assessments 

4.6.    An integrated impact assessment (IIA) was carried out for the London Environment Strategy (here). This evaluated the social, economic, environmental, health, community safety and equality consequences of the strategy's proposed policies in order to ensure they are fully considered and addressed. The findings of the IIA will inform the development of the work programme to delivery GLA Land and Developments sustainability strategy. 
 

5.1.    Approval is requested for grant funding of £50,000 for the purpose of commissioning specialist support on climate resilience to support strategy development and the identification of adaptation delivery opportunities starting from 2025-26. 

5.2.    The funds will contribute to the following technical outputs: assessment of current and future climate risks, identification of adaptation measures and a proposed approach or pathway for action.

5.3.    The grant will be made from the Environment Unit’s approved budget for 2024-25 financial year and transferred to GLA Land and Property Limited when the work is completed.

5.4.    All expenditure will be incurred this financial year.
 

6.1.    The procurement of the consultants will be undertaken through a closed tender process led by GLAP’s Procurement Business Partner with an evaluation 70:30 technical: financial. The below tables details the milestones.