Standing on the shoulders of giants in a rising sea Emma Howard Boyd speech to the Global Engineering Congress London, 24 October 2018

Thank you and good afternoon.

This year, marks 200 years since the founding of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Now, I haven’t been involved in environmental protection for quite as long as 200 years – but for as long as I have, successive UK Governments have been asked to set out their long term ambitions for the environment.

In January, the Government did just that, and launched the 25 Year Environment Plan.

For me, a crucial passage says:

“We will take all possible action to mitigate climate change, while adapting to reduce its impact. We will do this by… Making sure that all policies, programmes and investment decisions take into account the possible extent of climate change this century.”

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Two weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would bring benefits, but failure would be disastrous.

That disaster was summarised last week, at the launch of the Global Commission on Adaptation, as “hotter days, fiercer fires, bigger storms, rising and more acidic seas, shifting crop patterns, and the spread of tropical diseases into uplands and formerly temperate zones… among other threats.”

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I know you already know that.

Looking at the agenda for the Global Engineering Congress, I’ve seen sessions covering just a small selection of the challenges accelerated by climate change.

I’ve seen seminars such as: • “The Case for non-sewage sanitation” • “An introduction to resilience in an urban context” • And, “Sustainable structural design: energy efficiency vs structural efficiency”

And, those are just three from today… Day three of five.

Clearly, there’s a lot to understand and do.

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As engineers, you will be among the first people to find solutions to the problems brought by global warming.

Today, I plan to bring some other perspectives that I hope will be complimentary to your work.

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I’m going to talk about what’s happening in Government and business (or “green finance”, if you like), and then about how I think the Environment Agency and engineers can work together.

In short: I’ll be talking about the biggest political, economic, and environmental challenge of our time.

And, no, I’m not talking about Brexit.

The business opportunities presented by climate change are generally better understood in terms of climate mitigation and “the low carbon transition”.

You often hear people talking about getting the right “energy mix” to meet current energy needs, while reducing carbon emissions at a manageable rate.

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I think we also need to start talking about our “Adaptation Mix”.

We already have a mix of natural and artificial systems for managing climate impacts, and by making good investments in infrastructure we can protect people now – and maximise prosperity in the future.

Mitigation and adaptation are mutually dependent.

Much has been written about coal and oil reserves becoming “stranded assets”. It is vital that we don’t invest in flooded or melting assets.

There is no point in engineering an energy efficient building that could be washed away in a flood.

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The Bank of England’s Prudential Risk Authority said last week:

“If losses related to physical risk factors are insured they can directly affect insurance firms through higher claims.

“Global insured losses from natural disaster events in 2017 were the highest ever recorded.

“The number of registered weather related natural hazard loss events has tripled since the 1980s and inflation-adjusted insurance losses from these events have increased from an annual average of around $10 billion in the 1980s to around $55 billion over the last decade.”

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There is another side to that.

The US National Institute of Building Sciences estimate that every federal dollar invested in resilience will gain a six-fold return.

In this country, the National Audit Office says that every £1 invested in flood management saves £9.50 in damages.

Earlier this year, the UK’s Green Finance Taskforce highlighted that clean growth involves both decarbonising our energy AND building in resilience.

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I feel particularly aware of this because I worked in financial services for over 25 years.

As an investor, I listen when Mark Carney says: “Financing the transition to a low carbon economy is a major opportunity for investors and creditors. It implies a sweeping technological revolution, including investments in long-term infrastructure at roughly quadruple the current rate.”

The investment opportunities in the climate transition can be found in: – smart technologies – green mortgages – low-carbon securities – carbon trading – insurance – legal services – consulting – the architecture, design, and construction of infrastructure – And, the management of rivers and coastal areas against flooding.

That’s a lot of opportunities for people, governments, businesses – and engineers.

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There is more positive news. One of the best places in the world to invest in green finance is here in London.

The international operations of the City of London; the existing expertise and demand for sustainable investments; and the fact that the London insurance market is a world leader in natural hazard protection – makes it one of the leading green financial centres globally.

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This has been supported by policy.

Next month, we celebrate ten years of the Climate Change Act – internationally ground-breaking legislation that made the UK the first nation to set legally-binding targets for reducing carbon emissions.

It is flexible to the needs of the economy, but has a clear target: an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

The Climate Change Act’s carbon budgets reduced greenhouse gas emissions to 43% below 1990 levels by 2017. The share of electricity generated from fossil fuels has decreased from 80% to 50% between 2008 and 2017, and no new coal‐fired power stations have been built since the Act was passed.

It is still transforming the power sector.

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The current Government has put clean growth at the heart of the industrial strategy.

In his Mansion House speech, the Chancellor announced a Green Finance Institute to be set up in the City, providing firms with a one-stop-shop for climate science and capital.

The Prime Minister has said: “By making our buildings more energy efficient and embracing smart technologies, we can slash household energy bills, reduce demand for energy, and meet our targets for carbon reduction.”

Last week, the Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth – and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury – announced they are working with the Infrastructure Projects Authority to explore how best to produce meaningful data demonstrating which infrastructure projects can be considered ‘green’.

That will help investors looking to place funds in green projects.

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Whatever else is happening in politics, the Government is showing it understands the need to leverage green finance, in order to prepare for climate change.

But now, I’d like to talk about engineering and the Environment Agency.

The Environment Agency works to create better, climate resilient, places for people and wildlife.

Our other, equally important, objective is to support sustainable development and green growth.

Our operational activities are essential to the success of the 25 year plan.

My colleagues improve people’s livelihoods, protect the natural world, and help businesses to grow. They also demonstrate progress towards international targets like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

We manage and maintain around 7,000 km of flood defences on main rivers, around 1,000 km of coastal defences (such as sea walls), 17,000 structures, and have permissive powers to maintain flood defences on 36,000 km of main rivers.

Engineering is central to who we are. Over 400 of my colleagues are engineers, from new graduates through to the most senior levels of the organisation.

Engineers maintain and operate national icons such as the Hull Barrier, the Medmerry coastal realignment scheme, and The Thames Barrier.

We were enormously pleased you included the Thames Barrier in the bicentennial ICE 200 list, celebrating inspiring structures that show the value of civil engineering to society.

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We look to balance grey and green infrastructure in our flood schemes, and natural flood management is an important theme in the Government’s 25 Year Plan.

During a flood incident – when our decisions come under the most scrutiny – the discussion can often focus on a false choice between hard and soft engineering – but we do not recognise a conflict between them.

Actually, they support each other – as I saw last year, at Hondsbossche Dunes in The Netherlands.

The Dutch call the dunes “climate buffers”, because they extend the lifetime of the existing flood defences.

Natural Flood Management can be a cost-effective and sustainable way to manage flood risk alongside traditional engineering. It also creates habitat for wildlife and helps regenerate rural and urban areas through tourism.

This mix of what nature provides; what we can innovate technologically; and what we build, is part of what I mean by “our adaptation mix”.

The adaptation mix is essential for meeting the Government’s 6 year flood programme target of reducing the flood risk from rivers, the sea, groundwater, and surface water, for at least 300,000 homes by spring 2021.

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Everyone needs to consider their flood risk more systematically.

Right now, 5.2 million homes and businesses in England are at risk of flooding, but the reality is that nowhere is 100% flood proof.

It is in people’s best interests to consider property level resilience measures for their own property and I ask you, as engineers, to make flood resilience the norm in all development – not just in areas most obviously at risk.

We welcome the recommendation – put forward by Sir John Armitt and the National Infrastructure Commission – for a national standard of resilience for flooding with an annual likelihood of 0.5% by 2050, where feasible. And, with a higher standard of 0.1% in densely populated areas.

We need to carefully consider what this would look like in reality, but we look forward to discussing this further with the National Infrastructure Commission and ICE.

The Environment Agency is lucky to consider ICE a partner and friend.

This is demonstrated at an individual level: Ayo Sokale, a graduate civil engineer at the Environment Agency, is a member of the prestigious ICE President’s Future Leader scheme, and is working towards her Chartered Engineer professional accreditation.

A fantastic achievement.

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At an organisational level, we share the same concerns.

Last week, ICE made a crucial intervention on climate resilience, with the State of the Nation report on infrastructure investment.

Lack of water resources is not a futuristic concern.

From May to July, we saw the driest 3 month rainfall total for England since 1921. The average temperature this summer was the highest since records began in 1910.

The Environment Agency is committed to delivering the proper and efficient use of water resources.

We are a statutory consultee and government advisor on water company water resource management plans. These set out how companies will balance supply and demand, taking into account population growth, climate change, and environmental needs over a 25 year period.

We are working with the water companies to make sure the plans increase resilience through collaboration within the sector, as well as with other sectors, Government, and regulatory bodies.

We are also supporting the development of the national policy statement for water.

This will help the development of nationally significant infrastructure by streamlining the planning system – making it easier for water companies to build new schemes such as transfers or reservoirs.

We look forward to working with ICE on this.

As we look to manage the next 25 years of environmental change, perhaps just as important as finance and policy, is preparing the ground for the next generation.

The Environment Agency is a great place to work.

We provide support for engineers to progress their professional development and provide comprehensive training. We offer great, flexible careers that make a real difference to people’s lives.

But we can do better.

100 years after the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded, women got the vote.

Yet, women still make up less than 11% of the engineering sector.

Around 15% of the Environment Agency’s engineers are women and we want to achieve a target of at least 30% female engineers by 2030.

Our aim is for 50% of successful candidates to our yearly Graduate Training Scheme to be women, and we intend to actively attract women applicants through advertising.

There is a large skills gap looming, and more diverse workforces have more to offer – so it has never been more important to encourage more people – both women and men – to choose a career in engineering.

To conclude:

Climate change brings many new and dangerous threats, but over the last 200 years, innovation and excellence in UK engineering has given us strong foundations to build on, and advance with.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants. Severe weather threatens to throw us off, so we must be resilient and learn to adapt.

The impacts of global warming over the next 25 years are undoubtedly terrifying – but if we successfully manage our energy mix and, I would suggest, our “adaptation mix” too, there will not only be benefits to people and the natural world, there will also be huge opportunities for people, businesses, governments…

And engineers.

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So, here’s to the next 200 years of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and your work to secure a safe, green, prosperous future for everybody.

Thank you very much.

The Prime Minister has approved the appointment of Ms Pippa Lambert as a member of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB), with immediate effect.

The Senior Salaries Review Body provides independent advice to the Prime Minister and senior ministers on the pay of many of the nation’s top public servants. The appointment is for a term of three years.

Ms Pippa Lambert is currently Global Head of HR for the Deutsche Bank, with responsibility for the Bank’s worldwide Human Resources organisation. She was the Director of Global Reward at the Royal Bank of Scotland from 2011-2013. Prior to that, Ms Lambert held several positions with Deutsche Bank. She has recently been appointed as a trustee for Breast Cancer Haven. The recruitment process was conducted in line with the Governance Code for Public Appointments.

Published 24 October 2018

Tony Porter, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), has published dual branded in-house monitoring guidance in partnership with the National Association of Surveillance Camera Managers (NASCAM).

This guidance is for in-house monitoring centres that monitor their own surveillance camera systems only, and do not have contracts to monitor third party surveillance camera systems. It sets out the minimum requirements that in-house monitoring centres should consider to secure, manage and operate a public space CCTV scheme. It will also aid in-house monitoring centres meet the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice, and gives higher requirements for in-house monitoring centres that wish to meet standards that are applicable to third party monitoring centres.

Tony Porter said:

The launch of this guidance is a significant step in the delivery of my National Surveillance Camera Strategy and aims to drive up standards across the CCTV industry. This useful document will enable in-house monitoring centres to understand and execute best practice in respect of their CCTV systems and adhere to legal requirements.

I’m grateful to Ilker Dervish (CCTV User Group & NASCAM) and Alex Carmichael (SSAIB) for all their hard work and involvement in the development of this guidance.

Published 24 October 2018

I am delighted to be here, and I would like to thank UK Community Foundations for inviting me to say a few words.

The theme of today’s symposium, as you know, is “the power of place”.

I welcome this. My own sense of place means a lot to me personally. It has shaped me, informed my attitude and outlook – including how I feel about the world of charity in which I’m now so closely involved.

And, as I will come onto: community, locality, place: these concepts are absolutely central to the way many people relate to charity and charitable endeavour.

And it is, I believe, vital that we understand what this means, and why it matters.

Here’s my story:

I grew up in a place called Beeston Rylands, near Nottingham. It is small, and literally contained: bordered on one side by a railway line, and on the other by a river.

When I was growing up, Beeston Rylands was, in part because of its topography, a tight community.

People – people like my parents – took responsibility for our patch of earth. And for each other. There was a sense of civic pride.

I probably first recognised this fully – as is often the case – once I had left. As a very young woman, I moved from Beeston to begin my career in London. I came to miss my community and the solidarity and support I had felt growing up.

But moving away also granted me a new perspective on the place I thought I knew so well.

One episode best demonstrates this: Two years ago, I was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Nottingham. I was very proud to receive it, as were my parents who attended the ceremony.

It took place in a grand hall at the University campus. That campus is located in Beeston, and has been for many decades – since the early 20th century. And yet my parents and I had never, until that day, passed through its gates. Nor had many of the people I knew growing up in Beeston.

The university was there, we knew it was, but we didn’t acknowledge it. Nor it us. It wasn’t part of our world.

And when I think back on the people I grew up with – their potential, so often unmet; their intelligence and drive – so often ignored, I feel frustrated.  

Beeston was a great place for me to grow up in, it gave me so much. I credit my family and the spirit of my Rylands community with instilling in me the attitudes and determination I’ve relied on to succeed since I left.

What saddens me is the lack of wide-spread recognition among highly-qualified policy-makers and power-brokers that sharing and demonstrating those attitudes – regardless of status or qualifications – is the main ingredient for achieving and extending all forms of success.

There’s a rich, untapped human-resource in local communities that has the potential to do great things given the power and the opportunity.

I’ve now lived in London for many years and I have seen other cases of parallel universes coexisting within small areas – different, divided worlds on one street, or within one small area.

I’ve learnt over the years that community, connection and identity do not always arise spontaneously from place, to transcend differences of class, wealth, education, religion, and outlook.

That is even truer now, as many of us communicate more with strangers online than with the people who live alongside us, who walk the streets we walk, and breathe the air we breathe.

Community of place requires conscious effort, and hard work.

And charitable behaviour and endeavour has a crucial potential, and a crucial responsibility here. Charitable endeavour such as that nurtured by you, by community foundations.

As you will know first-hand, when charity fulfills its potential, its benefits extend beyond the people in formal receipt of a charity’s services. Profound though the difference is that charities can make in improving, transforming, enriching individual lives.

But at its best, charity does much more: it acts as a glue of goodwill that helps us do selfless, difficult things, and that enables us to see the good in others. Including sometimes in individuals or groups we may otherwise have little in common with.

Charity helps forge and sustain communities.

I have mentioned that a sense of place is profoundly important to many people’s relationship with charity.

We know this because of extensive work the Commission undertook over the summer to research and analyse public attitudes to charity, as we developed our new strategy.

We wanted to know how people relate to charity – what it is they associate with charity, and what that means for their expectations of charitable organisations.

And we found that many people – a large segment of the public – see the value of charity precisely in its ability to enable community. To enhance, organise, maximise the things that they already do and that they value in others: modest acts of personal decency and kindness that make for a good neighbour, a good citizen, a good person.

They see charity as being primarily about place, about locality, and about voluntary effort:

• Helping a neighbour who is in need
• Taking responsibility for improving the area you live in
• Participating in collective endeavours, in community projects
• Generally volunteering for the greater good.

Their perspective on charities as organisations is shaped by that.

They expect charity to make a difference they can see, and to be driven in every respect by the altruism, selflessness and kindness that motivates them when they support others.

This is what leads them to believe that charities must be held to a higher standard of conduct and attitude than other kinds of organisation.

Because charities are supposed to be the expression of the best in us, they are expected to behave as we behave when we’re at our best.

Incidentally, this expectation of good behaviour is shared by the public across the board. It’s not limited to those who see charity primarily in terms of local action.

But different groups of people arrive at that conclusion for different reasons, with different attitudes and perceptions.

And I think it is profoundly important for charities to understand this. To listen to people – the people they exist to support and those on whose support they rely.

My worry is that, at the moment, charities collectively are not reaching their potential in our society and our communities, because they are not always meeting shared public expectations. Precisely because they don’t understand where those expectations come from.

Too often, charity leaders think of public trust in terms of a PR exercise: if we tell the public enough about how great we are, they’ll trust us, and if they don’t trust us, it’s because the public don’t get us – and so we need to talk more.

I believe that those in positions of power – and that absolutely includes you in this room – have a crucial responsibility to listen to people and to act on what you hear.

When it comes to charity, we know that public expectations are not complicated, they are not unreasonable.

What the public expect is that charity means something, amounts to something more than just a laudable aim.

The public do not accept that charitable purposes justify uncharitable behaviour. People expect a charity to behave charitably. They expect charitable behaviour, attitude and ethos to run through everything a charity does and says.

And when they see behaviour and attitudes that are at odds with charity, they feel betrayed.

I’m not just talking about the big scandals in big charities here. This is not just about exploitation and abuse in aid organisations, or unethical behaviour by those involved in large scale fundraising.

All charities, including those operating at the micro level have a responsibility to uphold the concept of charity and demonstrate the behaviour that people associate with charity.

Selflessness, probity, and an indefatigable commitment to the purpose you exist to promote.

Now, it is not by coincidence that my first significant speaking engagement since launching the Commission’s new strategy a few weeks ago is here with you, with the family of community foundations.

Our new strategy sets a clear, positive purpose for the Commission: under my leadership, the Commission will work to ensure charity can thrive and inspire trust so that people can improve lives and strengthen society.

We will continue to fulfil our statutory functions. Registering charities, investigating them, providing legal permissions. And so on.

But everything we do from now on will be informed by our purpose – to help charity thrive.

I know that I am among a group of people here who dedicate their working lives, not just to a charitable cause, but to the very flourishing of charity in the geographical areas you serve.

To building and maintaining the sort of environment, the sort of community that I benefited from.

And to breaking down the barriers that, even in a place like Beeston, have in the past divided people by background, education and outlook.

Community foundations and the Commission already work together on a project designed to maximise the benefit of charity in society.

Supported by a grant from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, we are working with UKCF to help release and revitalise between £10m and £20m a year in dormant and underused charitable funds over the next two years.

We are working to help ensure that funds already available to the charitable sector, already within the charitable pot, are used to best effect around the country.

It is not acceptable to me, and I know will feel like sacrilege to you, that there are charities sitting on monies they are unable, for whatever reason, to put to effective use.

So this project is about helping encourage trustees of charities that are spending too small a proportion of their income on charitable activities, to work with us, and with you, to pass those funds to community foundations, in whatever way they are comfortable with.

The work is not easy, or straightforward. It’s complicated legally, and achieving our aims will require patience, sweat, and persistence.

I am confident that it will be worth it in the end. Not least because it will be a real, tangible demonstration of what we can achieve, the Commission and charities together, when we each fulfill our responsibilities for ensuring charity can thrive.

As the Commission has made clear in our new strategy document – we believe all charities share in a responsibility to ensure charity inspires trust, and can thrive.

And I say that community foundations carry an especially important responsibility, precisely because of your reach into communities, and into the lives of people who so rely on the support and help of others.

If places are powerful, as the theme of this symposium suggests, then you are leaders and drivers of that power, of that potential.

Your power arises in part from your proximity at once to the most vulnerable in your communities, and to those within them most able to address those needs. Notably because of their financial means.

So you can – and I hope in many cases already do – play a role in holding the projects and people you work with to the highest standards.

To help ensure that those involved in causes you support behave in ways that prove to the wider community that charity does reflect the best in us.

I have taken great joy in looking into the work that your charities do, and at the successes you have had.

The facts and figures alone tell of your reach: £77 million in grants made across the network in a year. Over four and a half million people touched by the work of community foundations. And a total distribution across community foundations of a staggering £1 billion.

But it’s the individual stories that best illustrate to me the role that community foundations can play in the lives of people and in communities.

For example the story of Celia, a mother, whose home was devastated in the floods that affected part of Cumbria in 2016. The community foundation for Cumbria provided emergency relief to those affected by the storms, and that included Celia and her family.

You can hear her story in a video published on the UKCF website. In that interview, she reflects on the help she received and what it meant for her at the time. And makes clear just how important it was that decisions about how to spend the monies available, about what to do, were made locally, and with the involvement of local people.

She clearly feels that she, and people like her were heard. Their needs were taken seriously, and responded to by those with power. More to the point, all this made her feel that the power to decide what was best for her local area, was shared with people like her.

I was struck by this, because it demonstrates that listening to people, learning from them and responding to their needs is not just a nice thing to do. It makes for better, more effective, more impactful charity.

So I hope that, when you and the projects you support disburse the funds made available through our joint project, you keep in mind the power of charities to build bridges.

To provide much needed power and control to communities to make decisions which affect them directly.

That you recognise the power of charities in how they operate can bring about the kind of change and make the difference that is currently lacking and people need to see and feel.

I want charity – I want your charities – to succeed.

Precisely because the divides in our society and our communities that I have spoken about won’t dissolve of their own accord.

If charities like yours don’t continue to have the support and the ability to build and sustain strong communities of place in society, it’s not just individuals like Celia whose lives will be affected. Or neighbourhoods like the one I grew up in that will suffer.

I believe that the very strength of our society, and indeed of our democracy, depends on people from different walks of life having the opportunity to come together, talk to each other, take each other seriously, and work together towards shared aims.

That’s why I will measure my success as Chair of the Charity Commission against the purpose we have set – ensuring charity can thrive and inspire trust so that people can improve lives and strengthen society.

And I hope all of you will support me in this endeavour.

Thank you