Section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires any organisation operating in any sector, which supplies goods and services, and carries on a business or part of a business in the UK, with an annual turnover of £36 million or more, to publish an annual slavery and human trafficking statement. This statement constitutes Writtle group’s slavery and human trafficking statement for the group’s financial year ending 31 December 2020.

Writtle is a UK-centred marketing services group with an international client base.  The group directly employs over 700 people across 12 operating companies in the UK, USA and Hong Kong.

We do not tolerate any form of slavery or human trafficking in any part of our business or in our supply chain and we will never knowingly deal with any organisation which is connected to slavery or human trafficking.

We have considered the nature and extent of our exposure to the risk of modern slavery. Given the location of our business and of our supply chain, and the nature of the goods and services that we provide, we consider that we are at a very low risk of exposure to slavery and human trafficking. We are not aware of any areas of our operations and supply chain likely to lead to a breach of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 but nevertheless we continue to monitor any new risk areas across the Group, mitigate any risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring, and protect whistle blowers. In particular, we will continue to monitor any potential risk areas in our manufacturing businesses, which engage agency labour and source raw materials from external suppliers, to reduce the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring within our supply chains.

In previous years, we have updated our supplier contracts to include anti-modern slavery and human trafficking provisions and provided training to personnel involved in procurement and within finance, compliance, and risk obligations in our Group. In the financial year ending 31 December 2020, we have adopted a standalone anti-slavery and human trafficking policy. Currently, we are looking at new ways to further raise awareness of modern slavery among staff working in our manufacturing businesses. Going forward we plan to review supplier engagement and supplier due diligence procedures in our manufacturing businesses. We will also be looking at how we can begin to measure the effectiveness of the steps being taken by us with a view to setting specific key performance indicators in the future.

Robert Essex

Chairman