Modern slavery update

Purpose of report

For information.

Summary

This report outlines the LGA’s recent activity in relation to tackling modern slavery, accompanying an update to the Board from the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Dame Sara Thornton DBE QPM.

Recommendation/s The Board is asked to agree the LGA’s ongoing work on modern slavery, and to support completion of the modern slavery survey by as many councils as possible. Action/s Officers to progress the LGA’s work on modern slavery as directed.

Contact officer:	Ellie Greenwood

Position:	Senior Adviser

Phone no:	07795 413660

Email:	ellie.greenwood@local.gov.uk

Modern slavery update

Background

The SSC Board and team have worked closely with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner since the first Commissioner originally attended a Board meeting in January 2017. The current Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton DBE QPM last attended the Board in September 2019 and will be attending the meeting to provide an update on her work and reflections on the role of local government.

This paper provides an overview of the LGA’s work on modern slavery, alongside that of the Commissioner and her office (OIASC).

Issues

LGA work on modern slavery

As longer serving Board members will recall, following the meeting between the previous Commissioner and SSCB in January 2017, officers worked closely with the OIASC to develop the first guidance for councils on modern slavery. Publication in December 2017 was supported by regional workshops for councillors and officers providing an introduction to the issue of modern day slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) and an overview of the role of councils in tackling it. Broadly, that role can be summarised as:

Identifying and referring victims of MSHT into the national referral mechanism (NRM), the framework for identifying and supporting victims in the UK.

Supporting victims through local support frameworks, particularly for child victims through normal safeguarding processes, but also potentially through housing support and under the Care Act.

Disrupting modern slavery through community safety /regulatory work and in conjunction with local partners.

Seeking to eradicate MSHT from local government supply chains through procurement and due diligence processes.

Following our early work to develop guidance and raise awareness, LGA work on modern slavery throughout the rest of 2018 and 2019 focused on the following:

Outlining how councils can support disruption activity, including holding a specific disruption conference and the development of council guidance on hand car washes, a high risk sector for a spectrum of labour exploitation including slavery. We also produced guidance on modern slavery for councils to target at landlords, recognising the close link between modern slavery and housing issues.

The development of guidance focusing specifically on the individual role that councillors can play in ensuring their councils are playing a proactive role in tackling slavery.

Setting up an LGA transparency in supply chains statements (TISC) portal to raise awareness and encourage voluntary submissions of modern slavery transparency statements. Starting off with 35 councils the portal now boasts 170 councils who have made a voluntary submission. Practical guidance to encourage councils to undertake Modern Slavery due diligence in their supply chains and help councils produce their own TISC statements is periodically updated. Subsequent guidance and briefing notes focusing on our supply chains in high risk areas have been developed focusing on adult social care and the construction industry. During this period the LGA commissioned research, undertaken by the University of Greenwich, to gauge the level of activity and standard of local authority transparency statements.

Building relationships with a range of partner organisations active in tackling modern slavery including the third sector (eg, the Human Trafficking Foundation, Hope for Justice and many other charities), the Home Office and others.

Supporting the development of the much delayed statutory guidance on the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which was eventually published in spring 2020.

Prior to the first pandemic lockdown in March 2020, we had identified two key areas of focus for future activity: firstly, highlighting some of the pressure points for councils in relation to MSHT and how these could be addressed, and secondly, undertaking further work to raise awareness of MSHT, including a second round of awareness raising workshops. Although this work has been significantly delayed by the redeployment of staff resources to support the response to COVID-19, we have now begun to focus on these issues.

In our recent submission to the Home Office’s consultation on a new modern slavery strategy, we highlighted concerns about pressures on councils in relation to support for victims of modern slavery and set out our view that the Government should ensure there is a clear, and funded, framework for providing locally led support, with expectations of support set out in domestic legislation. Although the NRM provides tailored support for recognised victims of modern slavery, there is an increasing focus on the support that can be provided within existing local support frameworks both during and after a victim’s period in the NRM process; particularly given the increasing number of UK nationals being referred into the NRM. UK victims accounted for the greatest number of NRM referrals in 2020, at 34% of the 10,613 victims referred. Reflecting the growth in child criminal exploitation through county lines, almost half of referrals (47%) related to the exploitation of children.

While many victims are indeed entitled to support from councils and other local partners, in practice there can be challenges associated with providing timely and appropriate support because demands are falling on services that are already extremely stretched, including housing support, children’s services and adult social care.

One particular, and acknowledged, pressure point is around the provision of local authority accommodation to adult victims of MSHT. When the original LGA-IASC guidance was published in 2017, there was a general assumption that victims going through the NRM process would be housed in accommodation provided under the victim care contract by The Salvation Army and its network of sub-contractors. Increasingly, however, The Salvation Army is setting out its view that, unless there are specific reasons not to, victims should be housed in local authority housing if they are entitled to this. The Government has recently updated the homelessness code of guidance to make clear that victims of modern slavery are entitled to priority status. We have therefore been working to develop specific guidance for local authority housing teams, including accompanying case studies, to highlight these obligations and how councils can seek to effectively meet them despite the significant pressure on local authority accommodation services. This is due to be published, supported by a webinar, in early March.

We are also proposing to update the original LGA-IASC guidance to more accurately reflect current trends, expectations and good practice, which as noted above have moved on since the guidance was first published. Although plans to repeat our original regional workshops seem likely to be restricted by Covid and the change in conference practices arising from it, we will look to support the launch of new guidance in spring/summer 2022 with a set of awareness raising activities, building on successful modern slavery webinars we felt in July and November last year.

To support our work on modern slavery, we have been working with colleagues in the LGA research team to survey councils on their work on modern slavery. This has proved challenging because modern slavery is an issue that cuts across multiple council services, and therefore does not lend itself to the type of concise survey that achieves a higher response rate. We are currently seeking to improve the response rate to the survey to enable us to develop a better understanding of council activity on this issue and would welcome the Board’s support in raising awareness of the value in completing the survey.

Alongside issues relating to victim support and awareness raising, work to support councils on tackling the risk of MSHT occurring in their supply chains continues to be a key focus of work, led by colleagues in the LGA’s commissioning team (part of the LGA’s productivity programme) ahead of an expected change in the law mandating TISC statements by public bodies as well as private businesses. As part of this work, the LGA periodically reviews the quality of local authority TISC statements through commissioned research undertaken by the University of Greenwich – the latest of which can be found here.

Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner priorities and activity

Dame Sara Thornton DBM QPE, previously Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police and the first chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, has been Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner since summer 2019. In September that year, she attended the SSCB and set out the following four strategic priorities for the period 2019-2021 - progress on these was set out in the Commissioner’s annual report for 2020-2021:

Improving victim care and support, including increasing the quality of victim support and improving the support to child victims.

Supporting law enforcement and prosecution, in particular increasing prosecutions and protecting victims of trafficking.

Focusing on prevention, specifically working with the private sector and raising public awareness, as well as encouraging the role of the public sector.

Getting value from research and innovation, for example defining the scale of the problem and defining research priorities.

In terms of the interface with local authorities, the Commissioner has been particularly interested in the following issues:

Devolving decision making in relation to suspected child victims of MSHT. The Commissioner has been a strong champion of enabling local safeguarding leads already working closely with suspected child victims of MSHT to reach decisions on their cases, rather than these being considered by the national Single Competent Authority. A pilot to test out devolved decision making with a small group of councils was launched in 2021; early evidence suggests that it is having significant benefits in reducing the time taken for NRM decisions to be taken.

Improving local authority housing support to victims. With stable accommodation an important component of a victim’s recovery, the Commissioner has been keen to improve local housing support for victims of modern slavery, while recognising the challenges councils are facing in terms of housing supply. The OIASC worked closely with the Government to strengthen the homelessness code of guidance and has also encouraged the development of reciprocal arrangements between councils to provide accommodation for victims.

Encouraging local authorities to review their supply chains for MSHT. The Commissioner has also championed the development of good quality transparency in supply chains statements by councils and other public bodies, as part of a wider piece of work to strengthen the effectiveness of existing requirements on modern slavery statements.

Alongside these areas, the Commissioner has also been working to promote a public health approach to modern slavery, as is increasingly seen in relation to serious violence, an area with clear overlaps with MSHT in terms of child criminal exploitation in particular. The OIASC has worked with the University of Sheffield and Public Health England to produce research, guidance and an outline framework on a public health approach. As with other public health approaches, this is based upon taking a societal level approach, drawing on data to understand current trends, and seeking to prevent MSHT from happening in the first place, as well as appropriately designing and tailoring services to meet need. Other areas of interest for the Commissioner include better understanding instances of retrafficking of victims of MSHT and promoting the ability for recovering victims to work to help support their recovery.

A major area of focus for the Commissioner in recent months has been the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill, which includes a number of proposed changes impacting victims of modern slavery. Many of these changes are of concern to organisations working with victims, as well as the Commissioner, with an overall concern that the Bill conflates immigration and modern slavery issues in a way that is unhelpful to victims and risks unintended consequences. Although the Bill is not one that the LGA is active on, as we do not usually comment on issues linked to immigration, we are aware of the concerns and are following discussions on this.

Possible areas of discussion with the Commissioner

The Commissioner’s three-year appointment ends in the coming months, and the meeting is a useful opportunity to hear her reflections on progress in tackling modern slavery in the UK. The Board may be interested to seek an independent perspective on the following issues:

The progress that councils are making in responding to this issue, and where the Commissioner feels most focus is required.

What ambitions the Commissioner has for the Home Office’s new modern slavery strategy and future of the evolving NRM framework.

The parallels between the adoption of a public health approach to tackling modern slavery and to serious violence, and what can be learnt from work on serious violence.

Where councillors individually have been able to have the most impact on work to tackle modern slavery.

Implications for Wales

We are keeping colleagues in the WLGA aware of our work to undertake a survey and develop updated guidance. The LGA research team has offered to run our modern slavery survey in Wales if desired.

Financial Implications

None: the LGA’s activity on modern slavery is undertaken within existing budgets.

Next steps

Officers will continue to progress planned work on modern slavery subject to any further direction from the Board.