HomeModern Slavery & Human Trafficking Statement

Statement for the year ending 31 March 2022

At Wiggin we strive to live our values and be visionary, authentic, unified, responsible and excellent in everything we do.

Applying each of our values, we are committed to legal compliance and ethical business practices in all of our operations, and as part of that we continually seek to improve our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking in all its forms.

Wiggin LLP has several group companies, including branch offices in Brussels and Edinburgh, and other England and Wales registered entities. Wiggin LLP has its head office in England and Wales.

As providers of legal services, although our business and its supply chain has a limited risk of association with modern slavery and human trafficking, we have implemented an anti-slavery and human trafficking policy and have provided mandatory training to all staff raising awareness of modern slavery and human trafficking.

Our aim is to foster long-term relationships with our critical business suppliers, and we are committed to carrying out appropriate due diligence on any current or future suppliers and to strengthening our policies and systems to ensure compliance.

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.

We have zero tolerance to slavery and human trafficking. To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our values we continue to improve our supply chain compliance programme.

We have a dedicated compliance team, which includes a representative from senior management of the firm and the COLP.  The compliance team and business management are responsible for ensuring that the system of onboarding suppliers includes all necessary safeguards and due diligence processes.

We have a centralised supplier register and centralised procurement procedures to ensure that our supplier contracts contain all necessary provisions with regard to slavery and human trafficking in accordance with our values and applicable law.

Our centralised systems have been introduced relatively recently and by applying these systems to all new and renewed supplier contracts over time we will ensure that all our contracts comply with our values and with the legal requirements regarding anti-slavery and human trafficking.

We provide mandatory training to all our staff regarding modern slavery and human trafficking.

We require all members, partners, employees, officers, directors and consultants of the firm, including temporary workers and others who are subject to the direction of the firm, to comply with our anti-slavery and human trafficking policy including undertaking training.

We will:

  • Continue to review our approach to modern slavery to evaluate its effectiveness.
  • Continue to improve our supplier screening process and risk-based assessment of suppliers.
  • Continue to develop our centralised register and appoint a partner to be responsible for procurement.
  • Expand and embed knowledge of the issues and risks around modern slavery and human trafficking to all appropriate staff across the network of offices.
  • Incorporate an assessment of modern slavery and human trafficking risk in our annual operational risk review process.
  • Review of the effectiveness of the steps we have taken no later than the end of May 2023.

This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes our Group’s slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 March 2022. It was approved by the Partnership Board on 11 January 2023.