Governance

Key topic: Sustainable supply chain

Influencing Positive Change

We recognise the importance of fostering a sustainable supply chain and comply with all laws, regulations, and rules relevant to our business. Through our ‘Influencing Positive Change’ ESG pillar, we aim to engage with internal and external stakeholders to collaborate with and influence our valued partners to share best practice and be more sustainable.

Key achievements

Internally, we invest significantly in educating our employees through a comprehensive training programme designed to enable them to recognise potential risks in our business and supply chains, and to encourage them to report any potential breaches of our policy on anti-slavery and human trafficking. This training programme is available to all staff and is deemed mandatory for key employees involved in procurement and contracts.

We publish our Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement annually and our risk and compliance team is responsible for ensuring that our systems and controls prevent slavery and human trafficking from taking place anywhere in our supply chain. We also have a whistleblowing policy which enables the safe and confidential reporting of any concerns or breaches in policy. In the previous financial year (2022/2023), we did not encounter any modern slavery risks in our supply chain.

Responsible short-listing is at the heart of our procurement process. We carefully evaluate every material new supplier and conduct a risk analysis based on the product or service’s nature and value. Our material suppliers must comply with all local and national laws and regulations, and we request information on monitoring tier 1 and 2 suppliers for unfair practices, responsible sourcing policies and corporate social responsibility. We actively communicate any concerns or non-compliance to our suppliers and if suppliers fail to meet our expectations or show reluctance to make necessary changes, we may cease to engage with them.

The future

We are committed to improving our procurement processes. Integrating ESG criteria into our procurement processes is pivotal to realising our commitment to a more sustainable supply chain. To this end, we are working to implement climate-aligned clauses within our contracts and evaluate the ESG performance of our suppliers to ensure strict alignment with our core principles and objectives by 2024.

Related policies and documents

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