Corporate report

Looking to the future

Published 9 June 2022

In 2022-23 we will further establish GLD as a collaborative, innovative department, an outstanding legal organisation and a brilliant place to work. We will continue to build on our relationship with the Attorney General’s Office and the wider Government Legal Profession. We will explore the opportunities we have to raise our profile, attract talent and learn from the wider profession.

Alongside this, our Business Transformation Programme is aimed at modernising GLD’s work and processes (particularly through investment in technology), enhancing our client relationships and supporting the Government in their priorities.

GLD’s Strategy is also closely aligned with the vision for A Modern Civil Service – skilled, innovative, and ambitious – as set out in the Declaration on Government Reform.

To enable us to realise our vision to deliver outstanding legal service and ensure GLD goes from strength to strength as a department we have identified 6 strategic priorities. We will deliver these in a way that supports the priorities of the Government and modernises our organisation, to ensure we provide the highest standard of legal services to our clients.

Further details about these plans will be set out in GLD’s 2022-23 Business Plan. We will:

Leadership

• Further embed leadership behaviours to enable inspiring, confident and accountable leadership at all levels of GLD.
• Ensure open and visible leadership that enables the delivery of high quality legal services across government; maximising the benefits of our regional offices and hybrid working.

Be Recognised

• Continue to invest in our diversity and inclusion initiatives, refreshing our strategies and ways of working to ensure we are building a strong culture of inclusion for all, and an environment where everyone feels supported and able to thrive.

Improved Offer

• Improve our pay and benefits offer to staff.
• Improve our resourcing capacity and capability, including through the use of significantly increased numbers of secondments.
• Review early talent approaches, outreach activity, and routes to qualification, to reach a bigger and more diverse pool of candidates.
• Further develop our ambition to become a national organisation, enabling employees to have rewarding and stretching career opportunities irrespective of the GLD location they are based in.
• Continue to ensure that we respond effectively to the needs of our people.

Connected

• Maximise our delivery of services to clients, and the quality of experience for our colleagues, by aligning with the Government’s interoperability agenda.
• Ensure that we are capitalising on the opportunities of new technology to ensure delivery of a seamless, connected service.
• Implement our Accommodation and Location Strategy, in line with cross-government initiatives (Places for Growth and A Modern Civil Service) and our clients’ estate plans.
• Embed our Greening Government Commitments around sustainability into our decision making.

Capability

• Improve how we create and share expertise.
• Enhance the way we deliver legal services to our clients, including where appropriate further engagement with the private sector.

Professionalise

• Legal Quality Assurance: Ensure that consistent and professional systems are in place across GLD to assure the legal quality of the services we provide.
• Develop a renewed Corporate Services approach, ensuring that our legal colleagues are well supported by professionals from other functions, in all GLD locations.
• Governance, Performance and Risk Management Review: develop systems and governance to ensure effective decision making for GLD.
• Set out a renewed vision for the Government Legal Profession (GLP), demonstrating the excellent work that we do together on behalf of our fellow citizens and in support of government priorities.
• Collaborate to raise our profile across the Civil Service and throughout the legal sector.

Case Study: The Environment Act 2021

The Environment Act 2021 provides for legally-binding targets to deliver environmental improvements in England, integrates environmental principles within policy-making across government and establishes a new environmental regulator to hold public authorities to account on their compliance with their environmental obligations.

The Act also contains measures on air quality, the protection and enhancement of our landscapes, wildlife and habitats, more efficient handling of resources and waste, and better management of our surface, ground, and wastewater.

The passage of the Bill saw many major challenges following publication of a draft Bill in 2018, re-introduction following the 2019 general election and a lengthy stop-start process through Parliament as a result of the first COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent restrictions.

This necessitated the establishment of entirely new ways of working, pushing the boundaries of available technology and finding innovative ways to support ministers in Parliament.

While GLD lawyers who are based at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) provided the core support, legal teams from across GLD and the Devolved Governments were closely involved throughout development of the Bill given its wide scope and the application of many of its measures throughout the UK.

The Environment Act 2021 was the first Bill in a generation to introduce major, cross-cutting changes to environmental law across the UK, setting the stage for the development of our own domestic environmental agenda. GLD lawyers were there, in person and working remotely from their homes, to support the passage of the Bill at every stage.

Case Study: COP26

GLD’s lawyers have been pivotal in delivering the COP26 agenda and combating climate change. The Climate Change and Clean Energy Team worked with lawyers across GLD and the wider Government Legal Profession to provide the necessary legal frameworks to enable COP26 to take place in the UK.

GLD lawyers led the negotiations with the UN on the Host Country Agreement, arranged commercial contracts for the event, helped deliver a COVID-19 vaccine rollout programme for COP26 attendees, and amended legislation to create a bespoke regime of international travel exemptions for attendees.

The conclusion of these complex arrangements delivered an inclusive, accessible and safe event and enabled tens of thousands of people from almost 200 nations to attend COP26.

Climate lawyers also supported the UK Presidency to deliver its key objectives in the lead up to and at COP26. During the 2 week conference the climate legal team were embedded in the UK Presidency delegation in Glasgow, advising on everything from negotiation procedure to the text of the Glasgow Climate Pact itself.

Some of the key decisions concerned finance, completing the technical rules to operationalise the Paris Agreement, and ramping up ambition for countries to increase their emission reduction ambitions for 2030 and beyond. The decisions that GLD lawyers helped to shape will be translated into actions, policies and laws around the world.