Nicky was born in Worcester, the eldest child of a Jewish refugee from Berlin. Nicky described an unconventional family life, sharing a home with three younger siblings and nine lodgers. She enjoyed building dens and roamed freely through the surrounding countryside, ignoring “keep out” signs and trespassing into overgrown gardens.
She did well at school and earned a place at university in London to study Art History. Friendships from Nicky’s student years lasted a lifetime. While working as a lecturer, she met and married Robert Gavron and became stepmother to two young boys. They then had two daughters of their own.
As a young mother, Nicky noticed the lack of provision for children and young people in her local community, in North London, and began to organise and campaign for improved play provision. Her involvement in this led to a project which altered the course of her professional life: the repurposing of the Highgate Wesleyan Methodist Church, built in 1905 in the early Gothic style, but then empty on the Archway Road for use as a youth and community centre.
Nicky found that she had a remarkable ability to build support and reach out to people to create movement for change. Alongside her fight to turn the derelict church into the Jacksons Lane community arts centre she played a key role in Archway Alert, opposing the plans to widen the Archway Road and turn it into a motorway, demolishing a couple of hundred houses, many occupied by artists on short leases and, of course, the church.
The artists formed ARTA – Archway Road Tenants Association – initially to fight the road widening. Once the road was saved, Nicky supported ARTA in trying to secure the houses to be bought by the occupants. Sadly only a few managed to buy their homes. Nevertheless, such campaigns marked a turning point, not just for Nicky, but for the wider public too in thinking about the damage car use was causing to city life and the need for investment in public transport to support travel by other means.
By spring 1988, Nicky was chair of Haringey’s Planning Committee and following a restructure of portfolios Nicky became chair of the Technical and Environmental Services Committee, a ‘super committee’ involving planning, transport, building control and public health. Nicky was Haringey’s representative on the London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC) and took over leadership of the Labour group in 1989, going on to become Chair in 1994. She was also appointed as one of the London representatives on the London and south east regional planning conference (SERPLAN), recognising that London was not just a city of 6.7 million people (as it was then) but the centre of a functional city region of 18-22 million people. The sustainable development of that city region was a major challenge for the future but also an amazing opportunity.
As an arts lover Nicky was deeply involved in the creative industries throughout her career, advocating for the integration of the arts into community development and urban planning and for its positive role in supporting the creative development of children and young people. Nicky stayed active in supporting Jacksons Lane Arts Centre throughout her life receiving a pink plaque for her influential role in November 2023.
Nicky served as a board member and later as vice-chair for the Greater London Arts Association (and later London Arts Board), contributing to the development of arts policy and support for cultural initiatives in the capital. Building on her commitment to the arts, Nicky established the London Association of Arts Centres to support and connect arts centres across London. While also founding the Arts and Urban Regeneration Group to promote the role of culture in city regeneration.
Since the late 1980s Nicky had been working on ideas to support the creation of a new strategic authority for London. Her often very detailed work on strategic planning, transport and environment issues fed into internal Labour Party debates as support for a new form of London government began to come together for the Labour Party’s 1997 election manifesto.
With a new Labour Government keen to make progress across a suite of policy issues she had long advocated, she became chair of the Local Government Association’s planning committee (1997-99) and continued to represent London at the London and south east regional planning conferences. She was a member of the government’s commission for integrated transport (1999-2002) and the sustainable development commission (2001-03).
Following the creation of the Greater London Authority in 1999, Nicky was elected London Assembly member for Enfield and Haringey in the 2000 London Assembly election and was Deputy Mayor of London from May 2000 to June 2003. With Ken Livingstone still outside of the Labour Party, Nicky was selected as the Party’s candidate for the 2004 GLA elections, only to stand down once Livingstone was re-admitted. She did so graciously but only after she had been granted the remit and budget to pursue her climate change priorities as Deputy Mayor (2004-2008) within City Hall.
Between 2000 and 2021, Nicky made her time at City Hall tell. She was instrumental in preparing the first (and later influencing subsequent iterations of the) London Plan, introduced a comprehensive suite of ground-breaking Climate Change adaptation and mitigation strategies, and helped to set up the London Climate Change Agency in 2005 to support sustainable development. Also in 2005, she co-founded the C40 Cities initiative, fostering collaboration among global cities to address climate change.
As a leading advocate for sustainable travel, she championed the congestion charge and low emissions zones and lobbied hard for the circular Overground line, which she called “Orbirail”. It now links Highbury to Willesden to Clapham Junction and on to Peckham, Whitechapel, Shoreditch and back to Highbury.
During Boris Johnson’s two terms as Mayor, Nicky continued to represent Londoners as an Assembly member until her retirement in 2021, focusing on planning, housing, and environmental issues, through her committee and outside advocacy work.
After stepping down from the London Assembly, Nicky threw her formidable energy into lobbying and campaigning on numerous fronts. These included changing national planning policy to protect and enhance green belts; increasing the use of green belts internationally; promoting the use of timber in construction; strengthening the rights of children and young people to access public realm; increasing nature and rewilding in London and reducing the use of incineration for waste disposal.
In addition, she found the time to convene a team of former colleagues to revisit the story of the London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC) to share their memories of its important achievements during the interregnum years of 1986-2000 when London was without its own government. How will the city develop post-Covid? How will hybrid working and technological innovation impact on city development? How can the Green Belt be re-purposed to act as a driver for economic growth and not a constraint? Are we condemned to a city full of Hong Kong style residential tower blocks to meet our housing need? How should London sit within a wider south-east, not an island of itself but integral to the regional economy? And many more.
In 2022, Nicky was honoured with the New Londoner of the Year Award by New London Architecture for her many contributions to the city’s development.
In 2023 Nicky was awarded a pink plaque by Highgate Heritage for her activism and advocacy work for inclusive, liveable cities, in co-founding Jacksons Lane and campaigning against widening the Archway Road.
