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This statement is made in accordance with Part 6 Section 54 (1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes South Yorkshire Housing Associations’ (SYHA) slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year April 2020 to March 2021.
SYHA operates a zero-tolerance policy towards slavery and human trafficking and is committed to ensuring it doesn’t occur in our supply chains or in any part of our business. This statement has the support and approval of our Board. Managers and staff are expected to report any evidence that slavery and human trafficking is taking place.
SYHA is a charitable housing association registered society under the Co-operative and community benefit Societies Act 2014. It owns and manages around 6,000 properties and provides a range of care and supported housing services. It has two active subsidiaries – another provider of social housing, and an estate agency.
SYHA operates entirely in the UK, and almost exclusively in highly regulated sectors. Many of its contracts are with public sector organisations. Other than in very rare circumstances, it sources all of its goods and services from UK based suppliers.
We have policies in place which help mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking within our business:
To mitigate the risk existing in our supply chain generally, we have an approved procurement policy, which abides by the Public Contracts regulations 2015 and includes the following:
We have assessed the nature of our activities and supply chain and consider risk generally to be low. In the period since the introduction of the Act, we have not become aware of any instances of slavery or human trafficking relating to our business. We regard the areas of potential risk to be that our tenants or customers are or become victims of slavery or human trafficking, and in the procurement of construction, maintenance, and office cleaning.
The steps we have taken with the aim of ensuring slavery and human trafficking does not occur in our business and supply chains are:-
We have robust tendering and other processes for procurement which include:
We review the effectiveness of the steps we are taking to eradicate slavery and human trafficking and modify our approach as appropriate. We will focus upon:-
Continuing to incorporate, where appropriate, issues relating to slavery and human trafficking when we update policies and procedures
We take steps to ensure staff are aware that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility and that staff have the training they need to be able to identify and report modern slavery if they suspect it may be occurring which includes:-
This statement had been approved by our board of non-executive directors.