Groundwork London 2015 Impact Report

GROUNDWORK

IN LONDON

We know that supporting people into training and employment, ensuring residents can afford to stay warm and well in their homes and improving the quality of London’s valuable public open spaces are aspirations we share with Local Authorities and Housing Associations across London.

Working in partnership with local authorities, housing associations and communities, we deliver hundreds of projects and services each year that make a real difference to London and the lives of Londoners.

We specialise in generating employment and training opportunities for those who are facing the greatest barriers to employment, promoting energy and resource efficiency, and empowering communities to create greener, cleaner and healthier neighbourhoods.

Thanks to our strong partnerships with the private sector, we bring greater added value to the communities and public sector partners we work alongside. Last year our corporate partnerships generated £425,000, directly benefitting communities in London.

Groundwork London is also a well respected and trusted third sector partner in Europe with a large network of public and private cohorts throughout the EU. Last year alone our EU partnership programmes brought over £650,000 of match funding to our projects in London.

Alan Smith, Chair of the Board of Trustees Lindy Kelly, Executive Director

CREATING BETTER PLACES IN LONDON

We’re on a mission to make London greener,. cleaner, safer and more resilient, for all Londoners..

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n the last year we’ve worked alongside 14,400 Londoners, including 6,500 children and young people, to create or improve places that matter to them.

Growing communities We continue to deliver hundreds of creative urban gardening and food growing solutions in London each year. This year we embarked on a new two year engagement programme - Make, Grow, Do which we’re delivering in and around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). As part of this Our Parklife programme we cocreated a new mobile community garden in the Park, designed to be relocated to other pre-development sites as the Park evolves.

In January 2015, community energy specialists Repowering London and Groundwork were awarded £750,000 from players of the People’s Postcode Lottery to deliver Energy Garden. Over the next two years, the Energy Garden partnership will support communities across the city to transform up to 50 London Overground stations into thriving community gardens and solar energy hubs.

Enabling community action We continue to manage a range of environmental grant schemes on behalf of national and regional

partners. Through these schemes we’re able to support communities with not only the funds but the advice and expertise to transform the places they love. The Mayor of London’s RELEAF grant scheme and DEFRA’s The Big Tree Plant enabled communities to plant 10,000 new trees in the capital last year. For the third year, we managed The Mayor of London’s Capital Clean-up Campaign, mobilising over 1,400 volunteers to spruce up 150 of London’s most neglected open spaces and waterways. This year we also celebrated the completion of the 100th new Pocket Park in London, funded by The Mayor of London’s Pocket Parks initiative. Groundwork designed and implemented 13 of these parks and secured over £100,000 in corporate sponsorship to match fund them. We also administered the Pocket Parks small grants scheme, supporting community groups to create 44 community pocket parks.

Designing a resilient city Our team of Landscape Institute accredited Landscape Architects specialise in Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD), an integrated solution addressing the increasing threat of flooding, drought and pollution in the city. Last year we designed and implemented more WSUD schemes, including Millshott Close rain garden in Hammersmith, which was highly commended in the 2015 Landscape Institute Awards. In partnership with

The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham we’ve created a network of retrofitted WSUD schemes on housing estates in the borough, as part of our ‘Climate Proofing Housing Landscapes’ project. Co-funded with £1.3m from the European Commission’s LIFE+ Programme, this project has become an exemplar for affordable, retrofitted climate adaptation measures on social housing estates in the UK and in Europe.

This project was also awarded Best Urban Greening Project 2015 by the Sustainable Water Industry Group.

GREENER LIVING & WORKING IN LONDON

We enable communities to choose a more sustainable lifestyle, saving money and resources.

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lobal environmental and economic challenges impact first and worst on the people and communities that have the least. We believe that tackling social inequality requires everyone, everywhere to live and work smarter and more sustainably.

Helping people keep well and warm As the cost of living continues to rise in London, fuel poverty is affecting more Londoners than ever before, which impacts most heavily on the health and wellbeing of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Our home energy advisors - Green Doctors - advised over 4,300 households last year on how to take practical steps to increase the warmth and comfort of their home and to save energy and money.

We recognise that achieving greater resource efficiency requires more than legislation and the provision of public services; it requires collaboration between energy companies, public services, individuals and communities.

This year we also embarked on a new domestic resource efficiency project SPIRIT, funded by the European Commission’s Intelligent Energy Europe programme.

We are training and supporting local energy champions to share energy efficiency advice in their communities.

With this ‘peer to peer’ advice model we aim to foster lasting behaviour

change, resulting in greater energy efficiency and financial savings for households.

Saving water, energy and money with Thames Water As part of our Thames Water Customer Engagement programme, last year our Smarter Home Visit Advisors delivered smarter home visits to over 6000 households in Greenwich and Bexley, helping residents to save an average 90 litres per household per day, the equivalent water that would be required to fill 77 Olympic swimming pools. In April 2015 we began to expand our programme of smarter home visits across London and expect to advise over 30,000 households in the coming year.

Bringing reuse innovation to London’s housing estates Last year, Groundwork and London Community Resource Network were awarded over £400,000 from the European Commission’s LIFE+ Programme to deliver REPURPOSE, an innovative new community reuse model. Working in partnership with the Local Authorities and Housing Associations, we are supporting residents to create community reuse hubs on five housing estates in London; in Hackney, Barnet, Islington, Southwark and Hammersmith and Fulham.

The first of its kind, this project will see the transformation of redundant storage units on housing estates into thriving reuse hubs, the Loops as they are known locally, for the collection, refurbishment and resale of household furniture and appliances that would otherwise be destined for landfill.

The creation of local reuse hubs will be complemented by a community engagement and behaviour change programme to tackle fly tipping and

promote positive environmental action on housing the estates.

IMPROVING PEOPLE’S PROSPECTS IN LONDON

We help people gain the skills, .qualifications, experience and. .motivation they need to move. .forward into employment..

All KPIs relate to the financial year 2014/15

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ondon is a tough place to be unemployed, especially for those without skills, qualifications or relevant experience. That’s why, in partnership with a host of private and public sector employers, we continue to deliver a range of training and preemployment programmes designed to increase the confidence, skills and overall employability of those facing the greatest barriers to employment.

Our programmes target young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), those at risk of becoming NEET, lone parents, the long-term unemployed, ex-offenders, and specific local labour markets.

Last year we delivered 1,600 weeks of training to Londoners, we created 127 jobs for young people who had little or no work history and helped 300 adults into sustainable employment.

Offering social value Our programmes offer significant social value to private and public sector employers, enabling them to offer local employment opportunities in vocational sectors including; horticulture, grounds maintenance, furniture restoration, electrical maintenance, customer service, energy services and healthcare support roles.

Our strength lies in tailoring our preemployment support and training to GET IN TOUCH

T / 020 7922 1230 E / london@groundwork.org.uk @GroundworkLON

each role, ensuring candidates are well prepared and have the skills and confidence to succeed. We do this through offering a package of advice and guidance, informal and accredited training in employability, Maths and English and quality industry standard vocational training. Last year our energy services training was awarded Gold Standard by the industry’s national skills body, EU Skills.

REWORK: Leading the way in reuse training

in horticultural and grounds maintenance. Last year our trainees worked on maintenance contracts in five London boroughs, with an impressive 89% of them securing jobs or accredited qualifications as a result. Our EU Life+ Programme has enabled us to train a new Green Team in maintaining water sensitive green infrastructure, equipping them for careers that will demand these specialist skills as WSUD best practice becomes mainstreamed in London.

In Wandsworth and Greenford we run two of the best-equipped domestic appliance repair workshops in the country, where our trainees refurbish household electrical goods and furniture for resale through charity retailers, online and in our REWORK shop in Croydon. Last year our REWORK team gave a second life to over 2000 domestic appliances and were also invited to attend Grand Designs Live and The Great Home Hack at Fulham Palace to showcase their upcycling skills.

Green Teams: changing places and lives We continue to deliver our waged horticultural training programmes that support young people to gain experience and qualifications

www.groundwork.org.uk/london Charity Registration No: 1121105 Company Registration No: 04212532