Blake Morgan – Slavery and Human Trafficking statement 2016

Blake Morgan provides legal services to clients in the UK and overseas operating from 6 offices across London, South East England and Wales. We belong to TAGLaw, a worldwide alliance of independent law firms. We strive to be the Firm of choice for our clients and for our employees. Every business within Blake Morgan Group aims to provide excellent conditions of employment, pay and benefits to every employee and to treat all employees and workers and our suppliers with respect.

Assessment of Risk

The nature of our business is such that our Board believes there is minimal risk, either within the Group or in the supply chains which support our business activities, of potential for involvement in, support for, or complicity in slavery and human trafficking.  However, we still insist upon a high level of ethical conduct from any organisation with which we do business.

Policies and Due Diligence

We have amended our Corporate Responsibility policy to refer to the Modern Slavery Act (the Act) and to make reference to this statement.

We have reviewed and amended our procurement guidelines to take the Act into account and to ensure that questions are asked of all of our potential suppliers, and those we already use, to ensure compliance with the Act.  We will only trade with those who fully comply with this policy statement and those guidelines or those who are taking verifiable steps towards compliance. In this way, we will seek to ensure, when entering into material contracts, that all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our stated objectives in particular when seeking tenders for service or when auditing our suppliers.

A number of our suppliers are externally managed and we are working with the external management company to ensure due diligence is carried out by them on our behalf to ensure compliance with the Act, adopting the same requirements as in our procurement procedures.

We will assess the effectiveness of our actions over the coming financial year and our statement in 2017 will reflect our assessment of the success of the steps we are taking.

Communication and Training

We will communicate this statement to all our staff to ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business and in future will include references to the Act as part of the Group’s training and information materials.  Relevant employees have and will undertake training relevant to the Act.

This statement has been approved by our Board, on behalf of the Members of the firm, who will review and update it as necessary on an annual basis.

Created October 2016