Previous Year's statements: Financial Year End 31st March 2020 | Financial Year End 31st March 2021 | Financial Year End 31st March 2022

MODERN SLAVERY & HUMAN TRAFFICKING STATEMENT

This Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking statement, published in accordance with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, sets out the steps that WK1 Limited (‘WK1’) has taken during the year ending 31 March 2020 to help prevent modern slavery in our operations and supply chain.

WK1 was incorporated June 2017. With offices in Braintree, Essex, WK1 is a contracting intermediary, engaging and/or supplying temporary labour to a mixture of agency and labour user clients. WK1 has staff working from its Braintree office undertaking registrations of the temporary workforce, liaising with clients, undertaking business development, operating weekly payroll and meeting its obligations under the Construction Industry Scheme (‘CIS’).

The temporary labour supply is provided to a number of industries such as construction, packaging, industrial, warehousing and transport – WK1 does not seek to specialise in a particular industry sector. In this regard, there is no industry that WK1 focus on in terms of mitigating risk of modern slavery – WK1 ensure that all aspects of its operations and all industries are considered.

It is only in the 2019/20 financial year that WK1 has met the £36m threshold to require a Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement. Therefore, whilst preventative measures are already in place, WK1 will be implementing further processes and procedures during the upcoming financial year to mitigate any risk of modern slavery and worker exploitation in its operations and supply chain.

WK1 believe areas that represent higher risk include;

• Foreign workers who have difficulties speaking English requesting that WK1 registration staff speak to another person with better English – WK1 ensure that the worker answers particular questions themselves initially and that proper permission is sought prior to discussions beginning with the other person. All calls are recorded.
• Duplicate bank details provided – WK1’s systems are able to undertake checks to monitor this. Where this occurs WK1’s staff will query why two people have provided details for the same account.
• WK1 may outsource the supply of labour to labour suppliers – WK1 undertake due diligence on all of their labour providers to mitigate the risk of worker exploitation, human trafficking or modern slavery taking place in their labour supply chains (as well as reviewing other aspects of compliance).
• Lower paid workers paid at or around the National Minimum Wage (NMW) or National Living Wage (NLW) – checks against employees’ date of birth are undertaken to ensure NMW/NLW is not breached.
• Right to work checks are undertaken on WK1’s employees in accordance with the Home Office guidance.

WK1 are committed to staff training and so, all staff undertake online training courses on areas such as payroll and GDPR. In the next financial year WK1 will seek to increase staff awareness on modern slavery and will seek training in this area for its staff.

Furthermore, WK1 are considering raising awareness with its workforce and will put further thought into this during the next financial year.

WK1 are sometimes asked to complete clients’ or potential clients’ due diligence processes or questionnaires to enable them to be on a client’s Preferred Supplier List (‘PSL’) – this may include questions on modern slavery compliance and ethical supply chains. WK1 will work cooperatively with its clients and openly discuss its approach to modern slavery.

WK1 will not knowingly engage with any business involved in modern slavery. In the event that we did become aware of any modern slavery issues within any aspect of our operations, this would be escalated to the Director of WK1 and appropriate action taken, depending on the circumstances. This could range from communicating with our clients/labour suppliers, making positive changes, seeking advice/reporting the incident to the appropriate authorities to terminating relationships.

Whilst WK1 does not operate in GLAA regulated sectors. WK1 works with Aspire Business Partnership whose Senior Managers hold a Certificate in Investigating Modern Slavery, awarded by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in partnership with the University of Derby.

Lee Sargeant
Director
March 2020