Modern Slavery Statement
This statement is made pursuant to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It outlines the steps taken by NEC Group[1] during the financial year ended on 31 March 2022 as part of our commitment to uphold and implement high standards of governance and ethical behaviour across our business.
We are committed to ensuring that slavery is not taking place in any part of our operations or, to the maximum extent possible, in any of our supply chains and to acting ethically and with integrity in all of our business relationships.
Our business
NEC Group is the UK’s leading live events business operating in exhibitions, conferences, music, sports, family entertainment and hospitality. Our vision is to be Europe’s most successful live events business, operating leading leisure, entertainment, and business destinations. We bring live to life.
Our venues include the NEC, ICC, Resorts World Arena, Utilita Arena Birmingham and the VOX Conference Centre. We also operate a national ticketing agency, The Ticket Factory, a hospitality brand Amplify and award winning caterer Amadeus.
Our business is organised into three business units:
(i) Conventions & Exhibitions – which operates the NEC, ICC & VOX Conference Centre venues;
(ii) Arenas & Ticketing – which operates the Resorts World Arena and the Utilita Arena Birmingham venues and The Ticket Factory; and
(iii) Amadeus – which operates our catering business.
Our policies on slavery and human trafficking
We are committed to ensuring that there is no slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking 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 ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains or our business.
We also adhere to standards of responsible conduct and train employees to treat each other with respect, and to adhere to laws, regulations, and standards such as those referenced above.
Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking
We have a zero tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking. As part of the NEC Group’s due diligence process to identify and mitigate risks related to slavery and human trafficking, we put in place systems to:
(i) Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains;
(ii) Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains; and
(iii) Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains.
In addition, we have established policies and procedures in place to protect whistleblowers.
Supplier adherence to our values
We work with a large number of suppliers of goods and services, event organisers, concert promoters and operational support partners. To ensure that our supply chains comply with our policies, we continue to develop our supplier due diligence processes and require suppliers to provide compliance information as part of our tender and other purchasing processes.
Our purchasing arrangements require suppliers to comply generally with all applicable laws and statutory requirements. They also include contractual commitments relating to tackling the risk of bribery, corruption, and tax evasion in our supply chains.
We have a compliance team in relation to this policy, which consists of involvement from Procurement, Human Resources, Finance and Legal teams within NEC Group.
Our effectiveness in combating slavery and human trafficking
As a result of COVID-19-related prohibitions against the staging of mass participation events, which remained in place until August 2021, and event cancellations in December 2021 and January 2022 linked to the spread of the Omicron-variant of COVID-19, our venues were closed to event activity for a large proportion of the financial year and a significant proportion of our staff were placed on furlough whilst event activity was prohibited. However, our commitment to treating people fairly and to ensuring that there is no slavery or human trafficking in our business remained and we made the following improvements during the financial year:
(i) We reviewed and updated our Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy;
(ii) We reviewed and updated our contract terms containing anti-slavery and human trafficking compliance obligations; and
(iii) We created a new Supplier Due Diligence Questionnaire to assist in the completion of supplier risk assessments across the business. This document now forms part of our standard new supplier account process.
During the next financial year, we intend to take the following additional steps to combat slavery and human trafficking:
(i) We plan to review again whether to introduce an overarching ‘code of conduct’ to bring together our key policies and values in respect of how we expect our suppliers to act in a fair and ethical way; and
(ii) We plan to review the benefits of third party ‘supply chain risk-management tools’ to assess whether the use of graph databases and AI-powered machine learning can further improve existing processes.
Training
To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide training to our staff via our online training platform. During the financial year, we re-issued our updated Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy to staff as part of compliance refresher training (which also covered topics including Whistleblowing, Ethical Behaviour, Anti-Bribery & Corruption) as they returned to work when our venues started to re-open.
Board Approval
This statement was approved by the Board of Directors on 22 September 2022.
Paul Thandi
CEO, NEC Group
[1] References to NEC Group in this statement are to LHTCA Topco Limited (a Jersey company) and its subsidiary companies, including The National Exhibition Centre Limited (UK company registration number 979395).