LSx Annual Review 2015-16

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INTRODUCTION

CHAIR’S INTRODUCTION

The Chinese curse of living in interesting times has again been with us throughout this year! But we are not alone; London and Londoners have come out fighting. We know that by collaborating we can become more resilient, and our communities have certainly demonstrated that.

I am pleased to present the annual accounts of London Sustainability Exchange (LSx) for 2015/16, having completed my first financial year from start to finish as the LSx Chair.

LSx have long considered how inequality limits London’s quality of life. As far back as our environmental justice work in 2003, we explored how the poorer communities are living on the more polluted streets. We have been inspired by so many communities and local authorities who are now making a difference and delivering pollution busting programmes in their local areas. We are also delighted to see that our new Mayor has instigated some important initiatives in his first few months of office.

This 2015/16 review highlights some of our key achievements. In ensuring that all of those benefitting from our projects enjoy a better quality of life, we are especially proud of our work looking at London’s connectedness, in particular the power of faith. Our programmes have been successful in reaching out to faith groups, saving water, setting up community energy and developing resilience to power cuts and the impact of climate change. We are also delighted by the many enthusiastic entrepreneurs that we have supported to ‘upcycle’ and flip that waste paradigm.

Despite continuing economic pressures, LSx has extended its influence on policy and practice throughout this period. A key aspect of our work has been the substantial impact that we have made on the air quality of our city.

Through our readiness to adapt, we have achieved impressive results and have been able to secure private sector funding as well as public sector contracts and third sector grants.

We developed a new “Faith and Water” toolkit, to improve water efficiency campaigns, based on robust research with seven faith groups. We have worked with parents, teachers and pupils at 18 more schools this year alone through our Cleaner Air for Schools programme, expanding into new Boroughs.

We have also completed Eco-Audits with 11 more third sector organisations, and improved the lives of over 5,000 people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The support of our founding partners, our project partners, our funders and our supporters have underpinned our success. I am extremely proud of our team and everyone who has helped LSx in these stunningly difficult times. Special thanks go to our new Chair – Garry Procter who has just completed his first full year as chair.

I would like to thank our board, staff, volunteers, partners, and funders for their continued commitment, enthusiasm and support of LSx. I look forward to building on our successes of the past year for 2016-17.

Samantha Heath, Chief Executive

Garry Procter, Chair

OUR VISION

London Sustainability Exchange (LSx) aims to accelerate the transition to a sustainable London by connecting and motivating people.

WHAT WE DO LSx is a ‘think and do’ charity that works with business, government and the voluntary sector to improve Londoners’ know-how, influence lifestyles and contribute to policy and practice. We do this by:

Reducing London’s environmental footprint Improving the lives of London’s disadvantaged communities Improving the health of Londoners Improving the knowledge and skills of communities to achieve these goals.

OUR AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Our Air Quality programme supports communities and schools to establish the hard facts about air quality in their area and work through social networks to encourage shifts in travel behaviours.

This programme has identified the need to use health and planning policy to tackle pollution and its effects.

Our Green Entrepreneur programme flips the waste paradigm: working with community groups to recast waste as a valuable resource and bring the reuse market closer to a ‘tipping point.’ Our aim is that communities have a social norm of re-use.

Our energy and resilience programmes engage with communities to empower healthy and sustainable lifestyles, enabling this to be a social norm. These projects often involve identifying the key individuals in a community, who in turn influence their friends and neighbours.

KNOW-HOW 103

1,,290

3,586 13,280

community groups

people trained

volunteers

Londoners benefited from our learner network events and advice

Knowledge empowerment is so important in everything we do. We share knowledge, tools and techniques to enable people to understand and develop their own solutions to address complex issues such as air pollution, well-being and fuel poverty.

LSx has helped both ELATT staff and learners to challenge our individual talents so that we can contribute to the economic prosperity of our local community and the environment, and empower us with sustainable social behaviours.

Mia Wylie, Head of Information, ELATT

Training Communities

Citizen Science and Air Quality

Through our Warmer Homes projects, funded by UKPN and Big Lottery, we have worked with local partners such as Community Health Action Trust, Age UK and others in Hounslow to train volunteers in low-tech retrofitting. We have helped alleviate fuel poverty in 200 homes this year.

Cleaner Air 4 Communities, funded by City Bridge Trust and Trust for London, continued to support groups of volunteers in area of high pollution to work with their local borough officers and health professionals to develop action plans to reduce the impacts in their area.

We began a new Green Entrepreneurs project in Waltham Forest, funded

by Stratford Development Partnership. 16 local residents and 50 young people (as part of TestTown 2015) gained business skills and assistance to develop ideas into sustainable business plan. Ideas included re-use of unwanted wood for artistic or practical uses, planting installations, re-use of drinks bottles for a new probiotic drink, and many more.

Cleaner Air 4 Schools has engaged with 6 secondary schools, and 20 primary schools, with 8 Local Authorities.

The main objectives remain to increase understanding of air pollution issues among pupils, parents, teachers and governors and to empower the school community to adopt less polluting behaviours.

Breathe aims to give Londoners in disadvantaged neighbourhoods a greater understanding and experience of the green environment. Activities have ranged from training sessions in wood crafting, to jam making for sale locally, to measuring air quality.

Learner Networks Our 13,280 people strong Learner Network has been supported through events and bulletins and project activities.

Conferences and events Our learner network events have attracted 1,460 people, who benefited from fantastic learning opportunities as well as the opportunity to make new connections.

Publications and Toolkits Cleaner Air 4 Schools

The students ran a series of campaigns, wrote a rap song, made leaflets and questioned Neil Coyle (local MP).

Teresa Crowley, Careers Coordinator, Notre Dame High School

We published and shared an updated Cleaner Air 4 Primary Schools toolkit, which helps schools to deliver their own programmes.

POLICY & PRACTICE 2,091

4,925

6,723

meters cubed of water saved

tonnes waste diverted from landfill

tonnes CO2 saved

We try to tackle the most pressing social, environmental and economic issues facing London today. We achieve this partly by using our experience and knowledge across business, government and voluntary organisations to help influence policies and practice.

Planning for the Future In March 2016, LSx hosted the Sustainable City Awards with the City of London Corporation. The annual ceremony recognises innovation in all departments of sustainability, from Health and Wellbeing to Travel and Transport. This year, Siemens’ “The Crystal” exhibition won 4 awards.

Following the awards, LSx will be working with Siemens to deliver a series of seminars, exploring the vision of the new Mayor of London across a wide canvas of sustainability challenges.

The Sustainable City Awards 2016 recognised and rewarded sustainable innovation and practice. In coordinating the 2016 awards, LSx demonstrated sound project management, tenacity and understanding of the sustainability agenda.

Claire Holdgate, Events Manager, City of London Corporation

London’s Air Quality Our annual Air Quality Conference brought together over 100 delegates to explore robust solutions for tackling air pollution through law, policy, technology, behaviour change, sustainable transport, data sharing and community empowerment.

LSx sought to find the voice of Londoners ahead of COP21 in Paris through our #Pledge4LDN campaign. Comments were presented directly to the Mayor at the Mayor’s Question Time ahead of the conference to raise the profile of environmental issues facing Londoners.

Collaboration In partnership with University College London Engineering Exchange, LSx organised a series of 3 Community Forums “Transport, Pollution and Data”, “Health, Ageing and Wellbeing” and “Smart, Sustainable London” which saw 53 academics and community members develop solutions to these issues with three new projects receiving seed money to get started.

Groups and panels We continue to submit consultation responses particularly in relation to sustainable and healthy lifestyles, encompassing energy, waste, water, air quality and food.

We play an active role in pan-London organisations that support innovation around health, wellbeing and climate change, particularly around air quality.

The London Textiles Forum The Thames Water Customer Challenge Group The UK Power Networks Customer Challenge Group The London Climate Change Partnership The London Water Group The Public Health Advisory Committee (PHAC) of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence

LIFESTYLES 52%

54%

2,523,269*

of beneficiaries were women

of beneficiaries were BAME

people reached by our work *this includes total reach of social media posts

LSx works with communities to empower healthy and sustainable lifestyles, enabling these to become social norms. We put research into practice, building on strong social networks and working with influential people to deliver measurable change in attitudes and behaviours.

LSX's approach to community engagement and workshop facilitation brought real benefit to the testing we were undertaking on home energy efficiency retrofits. The team's knowledge and experience were an asset to the project.

Andy Deacon, Director, Future Climate

Improving the health of Londoners

Measuring impacts

We helped deliver DECC’s Big Energy Saving Network, identifying the most vulnerable energy consumers and supporting them through tariff switching and energy efficiency offers. We directly reached 1,173 people, training 259. An estimated £24,291 has been saved on energy costs.

We always strive to reduce the environmental impacts of our own activities and those of our partners. Our positive and negative impacts are closely monitored to ensure we are achieving the greatest overall results.

125 people have been trained in knowledge and skill sessions designed to develop a healthy and sustainable community as part of our Well Brentford & Syon project.

Activities include vegetable growing, cooking and community gardening among others.

With Thames Water, we engaged with people from seven different communities from five of London’s major faiths – Judaism, Christianity (both the Anglican and Pentecostal traditions), Islam (both Bengali and Nigerian Muslim communities), Hinduism, and Sikhism – to create faith based water efficiency messages tailored to the beliefs and practices of each individual faith.

The course was well structured and the structure helped naturally grow my idea and hone in on areas I needed to develop.

Zoe Cricks, Student at Waltham Forest College

Last year we worked with over 185 individuals/ organisations, training 1,290 people, and reaching 13,280.

We worked with 8 local authorities, engaging a total of 4,150 pupils and training 380 through citizen science on reducing exposure to pollution.

In Waltham Forest, our work encouraged business ideas incorporating re-use. We diverted an estimated 15 tonnes of waste from landfill.

We built on local skills and enthusiasms to develop a healthy community, engaging 359 people and training 125.

We conducted eco-audits in a further 11 community organisations, with an estimated saving of £24,291 on energy costs.

We trained 44 community champions in low-tech retrofitting, reaching 312 beneficiaries, and saved a combined £25,196 on energy bills.

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE 2015-16

INCOME £316,080 Public Sector

£176,175

Corporate

£58,302

Trusts and Foundations

£79,205

EXPENDITURE £326,306 Fundraising and Development

The full independent financial review of London Sustainability Exchange for the year ended 31 March 2016 is available on request.

£62,882

Environmental Footprint

£37,952

Health

£18,054

Knowledge and Skills

£90,551

Improving lives

£102,970

Governance

£13,897

LSx THANKS THE FOLLOWING ORGANISATIONS FOR THEIR SUPPORT IN 2015-16 FOUNDING MEMBERS:

FUNDERS:

THE WAKEFIELD & TETLEY TRUST

London Sustainability Exchange 84 Long Lane London SE1 4AU

T: 020 7234 9400 E: info@lsx.org.uk W: www.lsx.org.uk

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