This week (12 – 18 October) marks anti-slavery week and at Electricity North West we play an important role in abolishing these abhorrent practices.
At Electricity North West, we serve 5 million customers at 2.4 million domestic and industrial locations. We have approximately 2,000 employees, supports hundreds of contractors, and provides a safe and reliable electricity supply, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Given the nature of our work, and our range of customer-facing staff, we play a unique role in spotting incidents of modern slavery in the course of our day-to-day operations.
We are proud to be a founding member of the Slave Free Alliance, a social enterprise and membership initiative launched by anti-slavery charity Hope for Justice, which exists to bring an end to modern slavery. The SFA now has over 70 members across many industries.
In addition, this year we have helped set-up a cross utility forum, the Utilities Sector Modern Slavery Working Group, which looks to bring a consistent and collaborative approach to addressing modern slavery risks and has representation from utility organisations across the country.
Following our first meeting in May of this year, the working group agreed to a vision of 'Eradicating Modern Slavery in the Utility Industry' and adopted the following as our purpose:
- Minimise the opportunity for modern slavery in our tendering processes.
- Rigorous supply chain management
- Consistently, follow best practice
- Consistent and clear employee communication within our organisations.
At Electricity North West we are already making progress on these commitments. We are working hard to review our policies in this area and published our updated Modern Slavery Statement earlier this year.
We are building additional questions relating to modern slavery identified in the working group into our pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) and this will be in place from next month.
We are also leading on sourcing of ethical work clothing to ensure that we do not unknowingly contribute to modern slavery in the clothing trade.
Our efforts to tackle modern slavery form a key element of the company’s Purpose-led Responsibility Framework which supports colleague-led community engagement. Our aspirations in addressing modern slavery go beyond legal compliance considerations. In line with our corporate purpose and principles - it is simply the right thing to do.
To find out more about our corporate social responsibility, including our commitments to eradicate modern slavery, you can read our Responsibility Framework Annual Report 2019/2020.
