Modern Slavery Statement
Modern Slavery Statement 2025
Introduction As Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mamas and Papas Group of companies I take pride in ensuring that we maintain a robust position to tackling human rights risks across our global supply chain. Through our proactive approach, rigorous due diligence and a commitment to transparency, we are determined to identify and address the challenges that may present in our complex supply chains.
I am pleased set out Mamas and Papas’ 2025 Modern Slavery Statement highlighting how we play our part.
Sarah Ashby, Chief Operating Officer
Business, Structure & Supply Chain
About Us
Established in 1981, Mamas & Papas’ passion for parenting has continued to grow. We want all families to benefit from good quality, stylish products that are both practical and innovative for parents and their growing families. We operate twenty-two Mamas & Papas’ stores and forty-three concession stores within partners across the UK and Ireland. Our brand is continuing to grow globally, as we also supply to both retail and distribution partners internationally. Our products cover all key nursery categories such as clothing, feeding and weaning, furniture, interiors, toys and gifts, and travel systems. Mamas and Papas’ own brand products are designed at our head office in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. We also undertake quality control working closely with many of our China suppliers. Over the last decade, Mamas & Papas has drawn steady support and investment from BlueGem Capital Partners. Mamas & Papas (Holdings) Limited is the parent company of wholly owned subsidiaries; Mamas & Papas Limited, Mamas & Papas (Stores) Limited, Mamas & Papas (Digital) Limited, Mamas & Papas (Concessions) Limited, and Mamas & Papas (Hong Kong) Limited. Together ‘Mamas & Papas’ group of companies. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and sustainability is a key focus for all leadership and wider teams across the Mamas & Papas business. This includes our commitment to tackling risks to modern slavery and human rights throughout our supply chain.
Our Supply Chain
We source and manufacture our products from a global network of suppliers. This is demonstrated in the map below. Our key supply territories include China, India, Sri Lanka and also the UK. We currently have thirty-five Tier 1 suppliers and are supplied by fifty factories. We have strong partnerships with our suppliers, the majority of which we have worked with for many years, building a close and collaborative working culture in which to drive standards. Over the last year, with the support of our suppliers we have started the exercise of mapping deeper into our supply chain. We plan to continue to progress our Tier 2 supply chain mapping, gaining further understanding, increasing transparency, promoting best practice and driving continuous improvement.
Governance & Policies
Our Commitment
The Ethical Trading Initiative (“ETI”) is a leading alliance of trade unions, NGOs and businesses, working together to advance human rights in global supply chains. Our ETI relationship, initiated in 2022 continues to date, representing our commitment to advancing human rights in the supply chain. We seek to promote honesty and transparency by working collaboratively with all rights holders throughout our entire business. We are committed to work with our partners to achieve practices in accordance with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the ETI Base Code. In March 2024, Mamas & Papas successfully progressed to full membership of the ETI. We shall report against the ETI’s Corporate Transparency Framework for the first time in December 2025. Mamas & Papas are also a proud member of Better Cotton. We are committed to support Better Cotton’s mission to improve cotton farming practices globally. This mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. This includes a commitment to ensure living wages, decent working conditions, access to grievance and remediation channels, gender empowerment and the end of forced labour.
Our ESG & Sustainability Team
At Mamas & Papas, we have a strong ESG team comprising of a Product ESG and Sustainability Manager and a Corporate Social Responsibility Associate who focus on modern slavery and human rights within the product supply chain, reporting into our Head of Technical and Product Director. Similarly, we have a team of compliance professionals lead by our General Counsel, legal team, taking responsibility for non- product governance, environmental buildings and energy consumption sustainability, regulatory and shareholder reporting, reporting into our Chief Operating Officer.
Sustainability Forum
To focus on our commitment to Sustainability and Human Rights, this year we held a number of Sustainability Forums gathering cross functional teams from product, buying, finance, IT, legal, distribution, retail and quality to explore key issues. This forum became involved in discussing key decisions and reviewing policy updates, regarding environmental policy and sustainability action. The outputs of that forum have guided actionable workstreams sponsored by our Product Director. Our sustainability goal is to reduce our environmental impact, foster positive social change, and ensure the long-term success of our business through sustainable practices. By bringing together a team of colleagues from different departments across our company we established an agenda for sustainability and human rights which is now integrated into decision making across the business. For any key business decisions with an ESG element, Mamas & Papas’ executive team also receive reports and ensure full consideration is given in a strategic fashion.
Sustainability Policy
One early output from our Sustainability Forum was the development of our Sustainability Policy. In this, we detail our commitments and goals under our four key pillars: people, planet, product and parenting. This policy extends to all colleagues, suppliers, and stakeholders involved with Mamas and Papas. Within our People pillar, we highlight our commitment to support our suppliers to monitor and improve their policies and processes to drive positive change throughout the supply chain and for our extended workforce.
Supplier Code of Conduct
We have several company policies which together instil practices to respect modern slavery and human rights within our business and throughout our wider supply chain. The key policy applicable to all our suppliers, is our Supplier Code of Conduct detailing our Responsible Sourcing Principles. We developed our Code of Conduct in accordance with the ETI Base Code. Each principle details our minimum standards and expectations of our suppliers and their extended supply chain, for example: Principle 1 stresses our commitment to ensuring employment is freely chosen; “Suppliers shall under no circumstances knowingly use or benefit from, forced or bonded labour including, involuntary prison labour. Employment should be freely chosen and workers should be able to leave employment after giving reasonable notice. Suppliers should ensure compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015”. Principle 2 highlights our approach towards trade unions and freedom of association; “Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected. Suppliers shall allow workers to join or form trade unions of their own choosing and to bargain collectively in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. Suppliers shall adopt an open attitude towards the activities of trade unions and worker committees”.
Our Sourcing principles in full capture a range of measures:
Supplier Code of Conduct
1. Employment is freely chosen
2. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected
3. Working conditions are safe and hygienic
4. Child labour shall not be used
5. Young workers are respected
6. Fair wages and benefits
7. Lawful working hours
8. No discrimination
9. Fair employment practices
10. No harsh or inhumane treatment
11. Protect the environment.
Whistleblowing Policy
Mamas & Papas work with AAB People (formally known as SeeHearSpeakUp), an external confidential third-party whistleblowing service to provide opportunities to expose unethical behaviour and other forms of wrongdoing and malpractice should they arise. The Whistleblowing policy applies to all colleagues and workers employed by us. Other individuals, including our contractors, freelancers, agency workers, subcontractors, suppliers and volunteers are also encouraged to follow the procedure set out in the policy. In line with our commitment to openness, we have advertised the service on our intranet, within policies and around the UK workplace.
Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy
This policy details the definition of modern slavery and the many forms it can take. It highlights Mamas and Papas’ commitment to ensuring we have ethical working conditions throughout our entire business including our supply chain and operations. This policy details how to raise relevant concerns to encourage openness.
Other associated policies include:
• Ethical Trading Policy
• Health and Safety
•Anti Bribery and Corruption and Sanctions
• Recruitment
Salient Risks
As stated within the UNGPs, salient risks are the human rights at risk of the most severe negative impact through our company’s activities and business relationships. We need to be aware of our salient risks so we can work with our suppliers to mitigate them.
Risk Assessment
This year we have conducted a detailed risk assessment of our activities in order to identify the salient risks associated with our supply chain. To do this we have used various data sources including: SMETA audit non-compliances, Self-Assessment Questionnaires, site visit checklists, and external resources such as the Global Slavery Index. Following the data collection exercise, our Product ESG team held a workshop to identify and prioritise the key risks. Within the workshop the likelihood and severity of each risk was reviewed and evaluated, from this, we could prioritise six salient risks. In addition to these six, we acknowledge that Freedom of Association is a risk throughout our supply chain, and we will consider this throughout our salient risk work. There are risks that exist outside of those highlighted below and we will continue to review our salient risks going forwards, using new data and supply chain insights.
Our Salient Risks
Human Rights Risk Areas of highest risk (Country/ Region) Children & Young workers Clothing (Asia) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China)
Employment is freely chosen Clothing (Asia) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China) Travel & Equipment (China) Gender & Discrimination Clothing (Asia) Health & safety Clothing (Asia) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China) Travel & Equipment (China) Living Wages & benefits Clothing (India & Sri Lanka) Working hours Clothing (China) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China) Travel & Equipment (China)
Risk Management
Our Audit Programme
A key pillar to our ‘Responsible Sourcing’ strategy is our audit programme, details of our programme can be found in our Ethical Trading Policy.We have established close working relationships with our suppliers and as our Product ESG team has grown, we have been able to dedicate more time to working collaboratively with them. Over the last year one of our key focuses has been the closure of key non compliances found within local territory audits. We want to ensure that we implement corrective actions as quickly as possible, with a level of support provided to our suppliers to effectively improve, and therefore mitigate, any potential risks to those workers.
Self-Assessment Questionnaires
As part of our Responsible Sourcing Programme, all suppliers are required to be members of Sedex. Sedex has a vision to make global supply chains more socially and environmentally sustainable through technology, providing clear data, valuable insights and accessible tools to its customers. Members of Sedex have access to complete the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) which contains questions on management systems, business practices, policies and worker information. We request all our suppliers complete the SAQ annually for each site manufacturing Mamas & Papas branded products. By obtaining this additional information we can use Sedex risk assessment tools to highlight opportunities for supplier improvement and mitigate risks.
Site Visit Checklists
Throughout the year several colleagues in our product team, for example, buyers, designers and engineers visit both UK and international suppliers and sourcing factories. Our site visit checklist has been developed to aid colleagues on those visits; it is used as a prompt to guide conversations with suppliers to increase awareness of what can be usefully observed when visiting factories. To promote due diligence this year, we have reviewed and enhanced that site visit checklist. We have taken learnings from workshops led by the ETI to incorporate new key questions that cover important topics including worker committees, worker representation, complaints and grievance procedures. By collaborating and educating our colleagues internally we have created an opportunity to gain valuable, more frequent insights into our supply chain and ensure that the issue is kept on the agenda in our interactions.
Training, Collaboration & Partnerships
Anti-Slavery Week
Employment is freely chosen has been identified as one of our salient risks and last year in 2024, we supported national Anti-Slavery week in October to share key information across our business. Utilising resources from the initiative such as awareness posters, we raised the profile of modern slavery prevalence and detection to colleagues across our business from head office, and warehouse to store colleagues and visitors. Our initiative shared key pieces of information including how to spot the signs of modern slavery, links to our own internal policies, highlighting how to safely report any concerns and signpost to third party modern slavery websites and videos to learn more.
Responsible Sourcing Awareness Workshop
We conduct annual Responsible Sourcing Awareness workshops to bring together all colleagues who onboard or work closely with suppliers and even those responsible earlier in the process at tendering and selection stage. Presenters from different areas of the business come together to deliver a session on best practice for our Responsible Sourcing. This provides an opportunity to embed our ethical requirements and illuminate important considerations when onboarding new suppliers. For relevance this session targeted those colleagues who have a direct impact on supplier selection for immediate and consistent impact.
Collaboration
As members of the ETI we can connect and collaborate with other brands and companies who have a similar passion and dedication to ethical trade. We have had the opportunity to present to ETI foundation members and share how we have conducted engagement activities with our colleagues, and we have connected one-to-one with other brands to share learnings and best practice.
Our Next Steps
1. Our audit programme is at the core of our Responsible Sourcing Strategy and therefore we want to continue to work collaboratively with our suppliers, supporting closure of audit non-compliances within an appropriate, yet realistic period. We do however acknowledge that going beyond audit is vital for the progression of modern slavery and human rights within our supply chain and we want to take our work to beyond the findings. We plan to utilise the data obtained from the Sedex Self-Assessment Questionnaires and site visit checklists to focus on improving management controls within our suppliers’ sites.
2. Following our initial salient risk assessment, we plan to build out our salient risk action plan and integrate this into our wider corporate ESG strategy. With this plan of work we aim to mitigate our salient human rights risks; drive positive change and impact through our supply chain. Firstly, we plan to conduct a thorough policy review to ensure we are set up to tackle our salient risks and also provide training to key colleagues and our suppliers. To support our salient risk action plan, we plan to explore opportunities to harness the support of other retail and manufacturing businesses, and continue to work with third party industry specialists to further drive positive improvement in identifying and minimising risk within our supply chain.
3. Additionally, with the support and involvement of our Tier 1 suppliers, we have commenced mapping our Tier 2 supply chain. We want to continue moving forward with this important work on supply chain transparency. In this way we can help to tackle disparities of vulnerable worker protection and aim to prevent human rights violations. In a demonstration of our commitment to achieve transparency and in compliance with ETI’s expectations we shall publish our Tier 1 suppliers on Open Supply Hub by December 2025.
4. Finally, we will continue to strengthen and develop our own internal policies and processes, in particular to help minimise risk in our activities procuring both our ‘goods for resale’ and ‘goods and services not for resale’ supply chains. We can achieve this by mirroring the work on our goods for resale routes. Additionally, we continue with our Responsible Sourcing training to ensure our colleagues are educated on our policies and salient risks, bringing to life how their roles and underlining the selections and decision which can impact our supply chain.
Closing Summary
As a business we recognise the gravity of modern slavery, and that it is a complex issue. We need to take action in solidarity with our partners and supply chains. I am firmly dedicated to ensuring that my Executive team, and every part of our business, upholds our responsibility to protect the rights of our colleagues and those working in our global supply chains.
Sarah Ashby, Chief Operating Officer
Signed on behalf of the Board of Directors Sarah Ashby CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
Introduction As Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mamas and Papas Group of companies I take pride in ensuring that we maintain a robust position to tackling human rights risks across our global supply chain. Through our proactive approach, rigorous due diligence and a commitment to transparency, we are determined to identify and address the challenges that may present in our complex supply chains.
I am pleased set out Mamas and Papas’ 2025 Modern Slavery Statement highlighting how we play our part.
Sarah Ashby, Chief Operating Officer
Business, Structure & Supply Chain
About Us
Established in 1981, Mamas & Papas’ passion for parenting has continued to grow. We want all families to benefit from good quality, stylish products that are both practical and innovative for parents and their growing families. We operate twenty-two Mamas & Papas’ stores and forty-three concession stores within partners across the UK and Ireland. Our brand is continuing to grow globally, as we also supply to both retail and distribution partners internationally. Our products cover all key nursery categories such as clothing, feeding and weaning, furniture, interiors, toys and gifts, and travel systems. Mamas and Papas’ own brand products are designed at our head office in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. We also undertake quality control working closely with many of our China suppliers. Over the last decade, Mamas & Papas has drawn steady support and investment from BlueGem Capital Partners. Mamas & Papas (Holdings) Limited is the parent company of wholly owned subsidiaries; Mamas & Papas Limited, Mamas & Papas (Stores) Limited, Mamas & Papas (Digital) Limited, Mamas & Papas (Concessions) Limited, and Mamas & Papas (Hong Kong) Limited. Together ‘Mamas & Papas’ group of companies. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and sustainability is a key focus for all leadership and wider teams across the Mamas & Papas business. This includes our commitment to tackling risks to modern slavery and human rights throughout our supply chain.
Our Supply Chain
We source and manufacture our products from a global network of suppliers. This is demonstrated in the map below. Our key supply territories include China, India, Sri Lanka and also the UK. We currently have thirty-five Tier 1 suppliers and are supplied by fifty factories. We have strong partnerships with our suppliers, the majority of which we have worked with for many years, building a close and collaborative working culture in which to drive standards. Over the last year, with the support of our suppliers we have started the exercise of mapping deeper into our supply chain. We plan to continue to progress our Tier 2 supply chain mapping, gaining further understanding, increasing transparency, promoting best practice and driving continuous improvement.
Governance & Policies
Our Commitment
The Ethical Trading Initiative (“ETI”) is a leading alliance of trade unions, NGOs and businesses, working together to advance human rights in global supply chains. Our ETI relationship, initiated in 2022 continues to date, representing our commitment to advancing human rights in the supply chain. We seek to promote honesty and transparency by working collaboratively with all rights holders throughout our entire business. We are committed to work with our partners to achieve practices in accordance with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the ETI Base Code. In March 2024, Mamas & Papas successfully progressed to full membership of the ETI. We shall report against the ETI’s Corporate Transparency Framework for the first time in December 2025. Mamas & Papas are also a proud member of Better Cotton. We are committed to support Better Cotton’s mission to improve cotton farming practices globally. This mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. This includes a commitment to ensure living wages, decent working conditions, access to grievance and remediation channels, gender empowerment and the end of forced labour.
Our ESG & Sustainability Team
At Mamas & Papas, we have a strong ESG team comprising of a Product ESG and Sustainability Manager and a Corporate Social Responsibility Associate who focus on modern slavery and human rights within the product supply chain, reporting into our Head of Technical and Product Director. Similarly, we have a team of compliance professionals lead by our General Counsel, legal team, taking responsibility for non- product governance, environmental buildings and energy consumption sustainability, regulatory and shareholder reporting, reporting into our Chief Operating Officer.
Sustainability Forum
To focus on our commitment to Sustainability and Human Rights, this year we held a number of Sustainability Forums gathering cross functional teams from product, buying, finance, IT, legal, distribution, retail and quality to explore key issues. This forum became involved in discussing key decisions and reviewing policy updates, regarding environmental policy and sustainability action. The outputs of that forum have guided actionable workstreams sponsored by our Product Director. Our sustainability goal is to reduce our environmental impact, foster positive social change, and ensure the long-term success of our business through sustainable practices. By bringing together a team of colleagues from different departments across our company we established an agenda for sustainability and human rights which is now integrated into decision making across the business. For any key business decisions with an ESG element, Mamas & Papas’ executive team also receive reports and ensure full consideration is given in a strategic fashion.
Sustainability Policy
One early output from our Sustainability Forum was the development of our Sustainability Policy. In this, we detail our commitments and goals under our four key pillars: people, planet, product and parenting. This policy extends to all colleagues, suppliers, and stakeholders involved with Mamas and Papas. Within our People pillar, we highlight our commitment to support our suppliers to monitor and improve their policies and processes to drive positive change throughout the supply chain and for our extended workforce.
Supplier Code of Conduct
We have several company policies which together instil practices to respect modern slavery and human rights within our business and throughout our wider supply chain. The key policy applicable to all our suppliers, is our Supplier Code of Conduct detailing our Responsible Sourcing Principles. We developed our Code of Conduct in accordance with the ETI Base Code. Each principle details our minimum standards and expectations of our suppliers and their extended supply chain, for example: Principle 1 stresses our commitment to ensuring employment is freely chosen; “Suppliers shall under no circumstances knowingly use or benefit from, forced or bonded labour including, involuntary prison labour. Employment should be freely chosen and workers should be able to leave employment after giving reasonable notice. Suppliers should ensure compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015”. Principle 2 highlights our approach towards trade unions and freedom of association; “Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected. Suppliers shall allow workers to join or form trade unions of their own choosing and to bargain collectively in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. Suppliers shall adopt an open attitude towards the activities of trade unions and worker committees”.
Our Sourcing principles in full capture a range of measures:
Supplier Code of Conduct
1. Employment is freely chosen
2. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected
3. Working conditions are safe and hygienic
4. Child labour shall not be used
5. Young workers are respected
6. Fair wages and benefits
7. Lawful working hours
8. No discrimination
9. Fair employment practices
10. No harsh or inhumane treatment
11. Protect the environment.
Whistleblowing Policy
Mamas & Papas work with AAB People (formally known as SeeHearSpeakUp), an external confidential third-party whistleblowing service to provide opportunities to expose unethical behaviour and other forms of wrongdoing and malpractice should they arise. The Whistleblowing policy applies to all colleagues and workers employed by us. Other individuals, including our contractors, freelancers, agency workers, subcontractors, suppliers and volunteers are also encouraged to follow the procedure set out in the policy. In line with our commitment to openness, we have advertised the service on our intranet, within policies and around the UK workplace.
Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy
This policy details the definition of modern slavery and the many forms it can take. It highlights Mamas and Papas’ commitment to ensuring we have ethical working conditions throughout our entire business including our supply chain and operations. This policy details how to raise relevant concerns to encourage openness.
Other associated policies include:
• Ethical Trading Policy
• Health and Safety
•Anti Bribery and Corruption and Sanctions
• Recruitment
Salient Risks
As stated within the UNGPs, salient risks are the human rights at risk of the most severe negative impact through our company’s activities and business relationships. We need to be aware of our salient risks so we can work with our suppliers to mitigate them.
Risk Assessment
This year we have conducted a detailed risk assessment of our activities in order to identify the salient risks associated with our supply chain. To do this we have used various data sources including: SMETA audit non-compliances, Self-Assessment Questionnaires, site visit checklists, and external resources such as the Global Slavery Index. Following the data collection exercise, our Product ESG team held a workshop to identify and prioritise the key risks. Within the workshop the likelihood and severity of each risk was reviewed and evaluated, from this, we could prioritise six salient risks. In addition to these six, we acknowledge that Freedom of Association is a risk throughout our supply chain, and we will consider this throughout our salient risk work. There are risks that exist outside of those highlighted below and we will continue to review our salient risks going forwards, using new data and supply chain insights.
Our Salient Risks
Human Rights Risk Areas of highest risk (Country/ Region) Children & Young workers Clothing (Asia) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China)
Employment is freely chosen Clothing (Asia) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China) Travel & Equipment (China) Gender & Discrimination Clothing (Asia) Health & safety Clothing (Asia) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China) Travel & Equipment (China) Living Wages & benefits Clothing (India & Sri Lanka) Working hours Clothing (China) Toys, Gifts, Interiors (China) Travel & Equipment (China)
Risk Management
Our Audit Programme
A key pillar to our ‘Responsible Sourcing’ strategy is our audit programme, details of our programme can be found in our Ethical Trading Policy.We have established close working relationships with our suppliers and as our Product ESG team has grown, we have been able to dedicate more time to working collaboratively with them. Over the last year one of our key focuses has been the closure of key non compliances found within local territory audits. We want to ensure that we implement corrective actions as quickly as possible, with a level of support provided to our suppliers to effectively improve, and therefore mitigate, any potential risks to those workers.
Self-Assessment Questionnaires
As part of our Responsible Sourcing Programme, all suppliers are required to be members of Sedex. Sedex has a vision to make global supply chains more socially and environmentally sustainable through technology, providing clear data, valuable insights and accessible tools to its customers. Members of Sedex have access to complete the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) which contains questions on management systems, business practices, policies and worker information. We request all our suppliers complete the SAQ annually for each site manufacturing Mamas & Papas branded products. By obtaining this additional information we can use Sedex risk assessment tools to highlight opportunities for supplier improvement and mitigate risks.
Site Visit Checklists
Throughout the year several colleagues in our product team, for example, buyers, designers and engineers visit both UK and international suppliers and sourcing factories. Our site visit checklist has been developed to aid colleagues on those visits; it is used as a prompt to guide conversations with suppliers to increase awareness of what can be usefully observed when visiting factories. To promote due diligence this year, we have reviewed and enhanced that site visit checklist. We have taken learnings from workshops led by the ETI to incorporate new key questions that cover important topics including worker committees, worker representation, complaints and grievance procedures. By collaborating and educating our colleagues internally we have created an opportunity to gain valuable, more frequent insights into our supply chain and ensure that the issue is kept on the agenda in our interactions.
Training, Collaboration & Partnerships
Anti-Slavery Week
Employment is freely chosen has been identified as one of our salient risks and last year in 2024, we supported national Anti-Slavery week in October to share key information across our business. Utilising resources from the initiative such as awareness posters, we raised the profile of modern slavery prevalence and detection to colleagues across our business from head office, and warehouse to store colleagues and visitors. Our initiative shared key pieces of information including how to spot the signs of modern slavery, links to our own internal policies, highlighting how to safely report any concerns and signpost to third party modern slavery websites and videos to learn more.
Responsible Sourcing Awareness Workshop
We conduct annual Responsible Sourcing Awareness workshops to bring together all colleagues who onboard or work closely with suppliers and even those responsible earlier in the process at tendering and selection stage. Presenters from different areas of the business come together to deliver a session on best practice for our Responsible Sourcing. This provides an opportunity to embed our ethical requirements and illuminate important considerations when onboarding new suppliers. For relevance this session targeted those colleagues who have a direct impact on supplier selection for immediate and consistent impact.
Collaboration
As members of the ETI we can connect and collaborate with other brands and companies who have a similar passion and dedication to ethical trade. We have had the opportunity to present to ETI foundation members and share how we have conducted engagement activities with our colleagues, and we have connected one-to-one with other brands to share learnings and best practice.
Our Next Steps
1. Our audit programme is at the core of our Responsible Sourcing Strategy and therefore we want to continue to work collaboratively with our suppliers, supporting closure of audit non-compliances within an appropriate, yet realistic period. We do however acknowledge that going beyond audit is vital for the progression of modern slavery and human rights within our supply chain and we want to take our work to beyond the findings. We plan to utilise the data obtained from the Sedex Self-Assessment Questionnaires and site visit checklists to focus on improving management controls within our suppliers’ sites.
2. Following our initial salient risk assessment, we plan to build out our salient risk action plan and integrate this into our wider corporate ESG strategy. With this plan of work we aim to mitigate our salient human rights risks; drive positive change and impact through our supply chain. Firstly, we plan to conduct a thorough policy review to ensure we are set up to tackle our salient risks and also provide training to key colleagues and our suppliers. To support our salient risk action plan, we plan to explore opportunities to harness the support of other retail and manufacturing businesses, and continue to work with third party industry specialists to further drive positive improvement in identifying and minimising risk within our supply chain.
3. Additionally, with the support and involvement of our Tier 1 suppliers, we have commenced mapping our Tier 2 supply chain. We want to continue moving forward with this important work on supply chain transparency. In this way we can help to tackle disparities of vulnerable worker protection and aim to prevent human rights violations. In a demonstration of our commitment to achieve transparency and in compliance with ETI’s expectations we shall publish our Tier 1 suppliers on Open Supply Hub by December 2025.
4. Finally, we will continue to strengthen and develop our own internal policies and processes, in particular to help minimise risk in our activities procuring both our ‘goods for resale’ and ‘goods and services not for resale’ supply chains. We can achieve this by mirroring the work on our goods for resale routes. Additionally, we continue with our Responsible Sourcing training to ensure our colleagues are educated on our policies and salient risks, bringing to life how their roles and underlining the selections and decision which can impact our supply chain.
Closing Summary
As a business we recognise the gravity of modern slavery, and that it is a complex issue. We need to take action in solidarity with our partners and supply chains. I am firmly dedicated to ensuring that my Executive team, and every part of our business, upholds our responsibility to protect the rights of our colleagues and those working in our global supply chains.
Sarah Ashby, Chief Operating Officer
Signed on behalf of the Board of Directors Sarah Ashby CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER