Modern Slavery Statement

Action to prevent modern slavery

We have reviewed our own business, our supply chains, and our recipients of funding to help us identify where there is risk of us unwittingly supporting modern slavery. We provide more detail on the assessments we have done on our employment practices, our supply chains, and recipients of funding below.

Our staff

In 2022/2023 we employed 643 staff (full time and fixed term). Our staff are mostly in professional or technical roles. Our recruitment practices follow Government best practice and we also:

• Confirm the eligibility of staff to work in the UK
• Are signed up to the Living Wage Foundation and committed to their principles, including ensuring our service industry suppliers are also compliant
• Have a Staff Code of Ethics which reflects the Seven (Nolan) Principles of Public Life
• Retained our Investors In People Gold standard in 202½2, meaning we are independently reviewed by Investors in People
• Recognise a major trade union, have staff who are Trade Union representatives and permit the union to advertise and recruit freely in our workplaces.
• Have a whistleblowing policy which provides staff with a number of options to raise concerns through senior staff, trustees, audit committee members or appropriate external contacts (e.g. the Permanent Secretary of State).
• Provide an independent and confidential assistance helpline staff on personal, legal, financial, tax, or work issues.

We believe these policies, practices and processes would identify modern slavery in our employment practices.

Recipients of our funding

In 2022/2023 Arts Council England distributed funding totalling £949 million. The majority of the grants made were distributed to small organisations or individuals based in England.

Our standard terms and conditions for grants obligates our recipients of funding to comply with all relevant laws and government requirements. This obligation includes the Modern Slavery Act 2015 where it applies.

Our National Portfolio Organisations terms and conditions for grants obligates our National Portfolio Organisations and other recipients of funding to comply with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 where it applies to the organisation.

Our supply chains

In 2022/2023 we purchased £14,116,000 goods and services from suppliers. Further information about our methods can be found below.

Most of our suppliers are within the UK, and we always consider using Public Sector Framework Agreements such as Crown Commercial Services where possible, meaning suppliers have already demonstrated they meet those high quality standards.

Where the Government framework Agreements are not deemed suitable for our requirements we undertake our own due diligence of the supplier(s).  We also use a Standard Questionnaire in accordance with Public Procurement Policy for high value procurements, which has recently been revised in line with the latest Government requirements.

Very few of our direct purchases come from the global industry sectors (e.g. agriculture, extraction or textiles) where there is a higher risk of modern slavery.

We have updated our supplier contract terms and conditions to include obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. You can find our contract terms and conditions on our website.

We have also updated our tender documents and procurement terms and conditions to contain a reminder for our suppliers that they should regularly review their obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

As a result of this, we continue to believe that the risk of modern slavery in our supply chains is relatively low. However, we will continue to take proportionate and beneficial steps so that we reduce that risk in our supply chains and our suppliers’ onward supply chains, such as working closely with our key suppliers – by expenditure and those in higher risk market sectors – as part of the contract management process to ensure they have appropriate processes in place to monitor and report on activity in their supply chains.

Training, Awareness and Making our statement effective

We believe awareness of modern slavery and human trafficking is important to make this statement effective. To achieve this, we will communicate this statement to all our staff. Staff who have any concerns may raise these through our whistleblowing policy, or report suspicions through our counter fraud policy. Our whistleblowing and counter fraud contacts are monitored and reported internally to our Chief Financial and Resources Officer.

Review

We will review and update this statement on an annual basis.

Approval of this statement

This statement is made in accordance with section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and is approved by the Trustees of Arts Council England. This statement will be made available on our website and on the Government’s Modern Slavery Statement Registry. 

Signed by Sir Nicholas Serota CH (Chair) and Dr Darren Henley OBE (Chief Executive) on behalf of The Arts Council of England.