Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement

Introduction

We, Knowledge Exchange Group Ltd (KEG), are committed to shaping and refining our practices to understand and minimise the risk of slavery and human trafficking in our business and supply chain.  We review our measures on a continuing basis.  We have zero tolerance towards slavery and require our suppliers to comply with our values.

As an equal opportunities employer, we’re committed to a non-discriminatory and respectful working environment for our staff. We want all our staff to feel confident that they can expose wrongdoing without any risk to themselves.

Our recruitment and people management processes are designed to ensure that all prospective employees are legally entitled to work in the UK and to safeguard employees from any abuse or coercion.

We do not enter into business with any organisation, in the UK or abroad, which knowingly supports or is found to be involved in slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour.

Our Business

KEG is a provider of conference and training services to the UK private, public and voluntary sectors. We are the parent company of Westminster Insight, Policy Insight Wales, and Holyrood Insight. KEG is a small business, with fewer than 30 employees in the UK.  KEG operates in the UK.

Knowledge Exchange Group has a global annual turnover of £3 million.

The nature of our conferences and training, reflect and underpin our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion and enhance our understanding or modern slavery and trafficking.  We also promote best practice, innovation, and learning on these important issues, in our conferences and training, for the public, private, and voluntary sectors.

Our Organisational Structure

Our business has a Chair and a Board of Directors, and Strategic Advisory Board, a Managing Director, a senior management team and approximately 30 staff including a production and research team, a marketing team, a commercial team, an event delivery team and a training team.

Policies

We operate a number of internal policies to ensure that we are conducting business in an ethical and transparent manner:

• We provide training to employees to identify and address modern slavery risks to ensure they understand the risks. We are committed to acting ethically and with transparency in our transactions and relationships.
• We are committed to using suppliers that have good sustainability policies covering modern slavery as well as other ethical considerations.
• We have audited our supply chain for exploitation, including financial exploitation, domestic servitude and child slavery.
• We make sure that our suppliers are aware of our policies and adhere to the same standards.
• We apply ethical practices to organisational practice, including paying the living wage at a minimum to our employees, and there are no unpaid internships (with the sole exception of offering unpaid work experience to students as part of university degrees, and in collaboration with a university partner).
• Governance – Modern slavery in our risk register and it is regularly reviewed at the Board.

Our policies on slavery and human trafficking

We have appropriate policies in place that underpin our commitment to help ensure that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. We continuously review and update all our policies.

Our Anti-slavery Policy reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to help ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains.

Our supply chain

Our supply chain includes:

Venues, catering suppliers, print and digital providers, training providers, IT services, marketing services and legal services and an offshore data administration centre. We expect suppliers to demonstrate compliance with the modern slavery Act 2015, and our terms and conditions allow for termination in the event of non-compliance.

We employ a number of individuals on a freelance basis, who are made aware of our polices and are expected to adhere to the same standards.

Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking

We understand that the following areas give rise to the highest modern slavery risks:

• Internship programmes (unpaid)
• Offshore data administration centre
• Venues and catering companies

As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk we:

• Have trained managers in high-risk teams to identify and report risks
• Review contracts with venue suppliers to ensure that modern slavery statements are in place.
• Have taken legal advice about unpaid internships and offer only unpaid work experience to students as part of university degrees, and in collaboration with a vetted university partner
• Discuss and report on modern slavery risks at board level.

We also have in place procedures to:

• Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains.
• Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains.
• Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains.
• Protect whistleblowers.

Training

To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide regular training to our staff.

Embedding the Principles and further steps

Following a review of the effectiveness of the steps we have taken in the past year, we intend to take the following further steps to combat slavery and human trafficking:

• Refresh training for all our staff.
• Remind our freelance workers of our policies.
• Remain vigilant, particularly with regard to potential risk areas in our supply chain, continuously checking those supply chains and ensuring they are aware of our policies and adhere to the same standards.
• Stay abreast of any new legislation in this area.

Alice Catterall
Managing Director
Knowledge Exchange Group Ltd
Date: November 14th 2024

This statement is published in line with section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Updated 14^th November 2024