Stamp Out Slavery

03/11/2026

Hospitality, events and retail businesses are taking on extra staff this month for the Christmas period, and much of that extra labour arrives through agencies, often at short notice.

Short-notice agency labour is one of the conditions the government's own procurement guidance treats as higher risk for modern slavery. PPN 009, updated in October 2025, flags service contracts that rely on temporary, agency or isolated workers, and it applies to central government, its agencies and the NHS with no financial threshold.

For any business bringing in seasonal staff, a few questions asked before the first shift give a clear picture of who is working for you. Which agency does each worker come through, and does that agency use another agency in turn? Who pays the worker, and into whose account? Does every worker hold their own documents?

If anything you see or hear suggests someone is being exploited, call the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline on 08000 121 700. It is free, confidential and open 24 hours a day.

02/11/2026

Birkin Group was the first company to sign up to Stamp Out Slavery certification, and in June they earned their third consecutive 4-star review.

Birkin worked alongside us in our earliest days, helping to test our systems and refine the audit questions, and received their first certification in August 2024. With more than 1,500 frontline staff, they have shown each year that their recruitment and payroll procedures are backed by ongoing training, so their people know how to recognise and report possible exploitation.

Laura Phillips, Head of People and Culture at Birkin Group, said: "There is always more we can do, but having that external expertise and challenge helps us keep improving."

Congratulations to everyone at Birkin. Read their full story here: https://f.mtr.cool/s8nogsxboo

Birkin Group earns third 4-star Modern Slavery Certification from SOS Birkin Group has achieved its third consecutive 4-star certification from Stamp Out Slavery (SOS), a UK wide scheme that externally audits companies' recruitment, payroll and training practices to reduce the risk of modern slaver...

30/10/2026

A cleaning operative spends the shift in a building owned by someone else, alongside staff employed by someone else, and visitors nobody employs at all.

From today, if any of those people harass that operative at work, their employer can be held liable for it.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 changes the Equality Act from this morning. Employers must now take “all reasonable steps” to prevent s*xual harassment of their staff, where the law previously asked for “reasonable steps”. They can also be held liable if a worker is harassed by a third party, such as a client, a customer, another contractor or a visitor, and they cannot show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.

That third-party liability covers s*xual harassment and harassment related to age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, s*x or s*xual orientation. It stands as a claim in its own right, and a single incident is enough.

The duty is anticipatory, so what gets examined at tribunal is what was already in place: risk assessments, reporting routes people actually use, training that happened and was refreshed, incidents recorded. What was done, rather than what was written down.

For anyone supplying labour into other people's buildings, that shape is familiar. Responsibility for a worker travels across the contract line, and what protects you is evidence of best practice gathered before anything happened.

The same holds for labour supply chain risk. An independent annual review can provide the evidence that protects you should the unthinkable occur and modern slavery be suspected or discovered.

stampoutslavery.org

27/10/2026

If your contract relies on people supplied to work on your sites, such as cleaning, security, catering or maintenance, renewal is the best moment to check who those people actually work for. Suppliers expect questions at this stage, and whatever you agree goes into the new contract.

Four things to ask for, in writing:

1️⃣ A named list of every organisation that supplies people to your sites: your contractor, the agencies they use, and any agencies those agencies use in turn.
2️⃣ How many of the people working in your building are employed directly by your contractor, and how many are employed by someone else.
3️⃣ What checks your contractor carries out on those other companies, and the date the checks were last done.
4️⃣ How someone working on your site can raise a concern, and who receives it.

A supplier with good oversight of its chain will have all four ready. If an answer is slow, incomplete or raises a concern, ask for the detail behind it and agree a date for it to be in place before you sign.

If anything points to someone being exploited, report it straight away to the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline on 08000 121 700, or call 999 if a person is in immediate danger. Modern slavery is a criminal offence, and under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 it carries fines and prison sentences of up to life.

An independent review gives you all four answers with dated evidence behind them, covering your supplier's own operation and every company beneath it.

stampoutslavery.org

22/10/2026

The Fair Work Agency has been running for six months. Here is where it has got to.

It was established on 7 April under the Employment Rights Act 2025, bringing the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and the Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement into a single body. Three organisations, one regulator, wider powers.

It can open an investigation on its own initiative. It can inspect records and workplaces, compel the production of documents, and bring claims on a worker's behalf. Minimum wage enforcement stays with HMRC under contract until April 2027, when around 500 staff transfer across.

Its first delivery plan, covering 2026 to 2027, names social care and construction as focus sectors for the foundational year.

Gangmaster licensing, which the FWA now runs, applies to agriculture, shellfish gathering and associated processing and packaging. Cleaning, FM and security sit outside that scheme, which is why buyers in those sectors ask a supplier for evidence rather than a licence number.

stampoutslavery.org

20/10/2026

A lot of organisations know modern slavery is a risk in their sector. Many have their own internal mechanisms for identifying such risks. Fewer have taken the step of independent certification.

So - what does SOS certification actually involve?
It starts at stampoutslavery.org. Organisations register and share details of their direct and subcontracted labour arrangements. SOS reviews those arrangements - examining the structure of your supply chain, looking at your policy structures, your recruitment and retention practices and anonymously surveying your workforce - with the aim of identifying any indicators that exploitation may be present or a risk.

If no concerns are identified, SOS issues a date-stamped certification - valid for 12 months - for use on your website, email footer and letterhead, and a certificate for your wall. Clear, demonstrable evidence that your labour practices have been independently reviewed.

Annual renewal is managed by SOS as the certificate approaches expiry. And any surplus after costs will be shared with a relevant charity - currently Unseen UK - supporting survivors of modern slavery.

This isn't a tick-box exercise. It's a credible, defensible commitment to ethical labour - one you can point to with confidence.

Register at stampoutslavery.org

18/10/2026

Three years ago today, on Anti-Slavery Day 2023, Stamp Out Slavery was officially launched. But the seeds were sown more than a year before that, as a result of a cross-industry panel brought together by Ben Douglas-Jones KC, a barrister working on criminal, regulatory and human rights cases.

Long before SOS existed, Lorraine Larman was managing a cleaning contract and realised a group of workers were being "helped" into their jobs and then charged for the favour. She did the digging herself. The man running it was exposed, and the workers were taken on legitimately.

Stamp Out Slavery began as a conversation between people who had each seen something like that, close up, in the sectors they had spent their working lives in.

Callum MacLeod, our Managing Director, came from corporate cleaning and support services, and is also a law graduate. Operations Director Angie Morrish arrived from the other direction, with thirty years in charity, governance, training and ESG.

That mix is what an independent review is built on. People who know the sector, looking at who supplied the labour, who was paid, and what the records show, across a company's own operation and its subcontractors'.

Three years on, every organisation that has been through the process holds a dated quality mark and a report setting out what was checked.

If you would like the same look at your own labour supply chain, that is what we do.

stampoutslavery.org

16/10/2026

Always great networking with the Hill Club

15/10/2026