About Us

About the GLA and the Environment and Energy Unit

Greater London Authority

The Greater London Authority is London’s regional government. It supports the Mayor of London in delivering programmes and priorities, and is overseen by the London Assembly, who provide scrutiny of the Mayor’s programme and the overall administration of the authority.

The GLA is led by its Chief Officer, Mary Harpley, and its Corporate Management Team (CMT), comprising its Executive Directors and the Assistant Director for Human Resources and Organisational Development. The postholder will join the GLA’s Senior Leadership Team, which brings the CMT together with Assistant Directors and key senior staff and meets regularly to discuss organisational priorities and development.

The GLA has approximately 1,300 staff, working in five directorates:

Communities and Skills
Good Growth
Housing and Land
Finance and Resources
Strategy and Communications

The Environment and Energy Unit is part of the Good Growth Directorate, alongside units working on planning; regeneration; economic development; culture; transport, infrastructure and connectivity; and the delivery of European funding programmes.

In addition, the Mayor is supported by an office comprising their Chief of Staff and Mayoral Directors, plus a number of Deputy Mayors focusing on specific policy and delivery areas (including the Deputy Mayor for the Environment). A separate secretariat team provides support to the Assembly.

The GLA is committed to improving the diversity of its workforce in order to better represent the communities that we serve. Whilst we have made much progress on equality, diversity and inclusion, we recognise that we have more work to do.

The GLA is currently based at City Hall, on the south bank of the Thames close to Tower Bridge, but it has announced that it will move later this year. The new home for the Mayor of London and the Assembly will be at the Crystal in the Royal Docks area of east London, with additional central London office space for GLA staff provided on Union Street close to Southwark and Blackfriars stations.

The GLA is currently working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the impacts of the pandemic ease, it is expected that most staff will continue to work from home for a proportion of the week (and the GLA has long-standing flexible working policies to support this), although the organisation will not operate on a fully-remote basis. All staff will therefore be expected to be able to attend meetings in person at both office locations as required, and senior managers in particular will need to provide regular face-to-face leadership and opportunities for collaboration to their teams.

We have a strong track record in supporting and developing our workforce, and can offer a flexible, supportive, and challenging environment in which to work.

Environment and Energy Unit

The environment and energy unit has around 70 staff, covering the full range of policy and delivery areas, and working closely with the Deputy Mayor for the Environment and the wider Mayoral team. The unit also supports the London Sustainable Development Commission and the London Green Spaces Commission, and it has close links with the C40 group of major cities and other national and international networks. The staff of the unit are drawn from a wide range of backgrounds including central and local government, environmental NGOs, utilities and the wider private sector, with a number of acknowledged experts in their fields.

Over recent years, the unit’s work has delivered real results, not just warm words. Recent research has shown, for example, that its policies to improve air pollution have seen huge reductions in emissions and increased life expectancy for London-born children. And this is allowing London to provide important international leadership, showing what can be achieved through effective urban policy, especially in the year of COP-26.

The unit has a collaborative and entrepreneurial working culture. It engages closely with Transport for London and teams across the GLA to support the delivery of the overall environment strategy – for example on green finance and skills, charging infrastructure for electric vehicles or procuring lower carbon energy for London’s public sector – as well as with other stakeholders in the sector and more widely.

It has an active Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion group, and is developing and implementing a broad-ranging strategy to embed EDI as fully as possible both in its internal management and processes and in its external-facing policy work.

The Environment and Energy Unit has a core revenue budget of around £20m, although this is regularly supplemented with external funding secured from central Government and other partners. In addition, the Unit manages a substantial capital programme totalling c. £18m in 2021-22.

London Environment Strategy

The environment is one of the seven statutory areas on which the Mayor must produce a strategy document; making this a crucial role. The state of London’s environment affects everyone who lives in and visits the city – it helps Londoners to stay healthy, makes London a good place to work and keeps the city functioning from day to day.

The current London Environment Strategy was published in May 2018 and sets out a broad range of policies to reduce carbon emissions and pollution, tackle fuel poverty and improve energy efficiency in London’s buildings, provide better access to green space, increase reuse and recycling, and achieve other key environmental goals. More recently, London has committed to achieving net zero by 2030 and put the environment at the heart of its Covid-19 recovery plan.

While the outcome of the current Mayoral election will clearly affect the forward programme, existing plans in support of the environment strategy over the coming months and years include the expansion of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone to cover all of inner London (up to the North and South Circular roads); the rollout of enhanced programmes to improve energy efficiency and tackle fuel poverty; the development of policies to promote green finance, skills and jobs; and engagement with the COP-26 process to secure meaningful international action on climate change and position London as a world leader on emissions reduction and adaptation.

The London Covid-19 Recovery Programme

The London Recovery Board was established in June 2020 to oversee London’s recovery from the economic and social impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is chaired by the Mayor London and the Chair of London Councils (representing the 33 London Boroughs), and brings together key individuals from across London’s major institutions, as well as its wider public, private and third sectors, to plan for and oversee the capital’s long-term recovery, developing a strategy and call to action to reshape London as a fairer, more equal, greener and resilient city.

The London Recovery Board has committed to taking a missions-based approach to the London Recovery Programme. This approach is based on the work of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London – and it focuses recovery work around a small number of missions which are designed to be bold and ambitious yet realistic enough so that they can gather wide support for delivery. The objective of this approach is to foster widespread collaboration across different sectors in support of recovery. More information on the London Recovery Board’s work, including the nine recovery missions, can be found here.

COVID-19 has only emphasised the critical role of the environment and of the energy sector in London’s economy and society. The importance of green space for health and wellbeing has been brought to the fore, along with the need for warm and well-insulated homes, particularly for the most vulnerable. And the green economy is proving one of the fastest growing and most resilient sectors in the current context. For these reasons, the London Recovery Board has identified a Green New Deal mission has been identified and agreed by the Board as a key part of London’s recovery.

The aim of this mission is to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies and improve air quality by doubling the size of London’s green economy by 2030, enabling job creation for all. The types of activities that will form part of the mission include:

Scaling up programmes to retrofit and improve existing buildings, creating jobs and tackling fuel poverty
Accelerating programmes that increase access to green spaces, support active travel and zero emission fleets, help adapt to climate change and deliver better health
Mobilising finance to support environmental programmes and enable the growth of London’s clean tech and circular businesses to meet our climate targets