Slavery Statement
For Financial Year Ending June 2023
Background
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA 2015) focuses specifically on the issue of modern slavery to ensure offenders are suitably reprimanded with severe sentences. Modern slavery encompasses the offences of: 'slavery' where ownership is exercised over a person; 'servitude' which involves the obligation to provide service imposed by coercion; 'forced or compulsory labour' involves work or service exacted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which the person has not offered themselves voluntarily; and 'human trafficking' concerns arranging or facilitating the travel of another with a view to exploiting them.
The MSA 2015 requires large businesses, with sales of over 36 million, to be transparent about their efforts to eradicate Slavery and Human Trafficking. This statement therefore explains the steps we have taken during the financial year to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in any of our supply chains or any part of our business.
Who we are
The organisation is composed of a holding company (Chapelhouse Holdings Ltd) and two trading companies (Chapelhouse Motor Co Ltd and Chapelhouse Southport Ltd (Dormant)) which specialise in the retailing of used and new vehicles and the service and repair of vehicles (aftersales), primarily through our 11 retail sites and our online platform chapelhouse.co.uk.
How we prevent modern slavery and human trafficking
We have policies in place internally, which are available to all staff and these can be accessed by third parties on request, simply contact Human Resources for a copy
Our policies are reviewed annually by the organisation's Human Resources department to ensure we remain compliant.
As part of the organisation's induction process and throughout workers' employment with us, we train all staff to treat others with respect and courtesy as well as ensuring they adhere to all relevant laws, regulations and standards. This is an ongoing due diligence process.
We offer a training and development program for all staff from the ground floor through to management. We focus on ensuring our management team is not only aware of the requirements to be alert to modern slavery but can also address concerns raised by their team or any suppliers.
If any worker is found in breach of our policies, we ensure suitable disciplinary action is taken which can include termination.
In relation to our supply chains, we use best endeavour to ensure the third parties who we work with provide the required standard of working conditions.
As part of our risk assessments, we have best endeavour procedures in place to identify whether there is a possible risk of slavery and human trafficking either in the business or our supply chain. We aim to work with our colleagues and suppliers to ensure collaboration to remedy or mitigate risks.
We allow all individuals who work or provide services to us the right to freely choose employment and, the right to associate freely with other individuals. Workers are free to choose whether to join a trade union or not and as a result of our training, we offer an environment which is free from harassment and unlawful discrimination. We ensure our working practices are in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 and all employment legislation. We do not engage in forced or involuntary labour and have a zero-tolerance approach to the same, meaning we do not tolerate any of our suppliers engaging in such conduct. We require suppliers to certify that they do not participate in any forced or involuntary labour with their workers, subcontractors, agents or associates.
We aim to ensure that our performance indicators do not put pressure on or influence any modern slavery risk. We do not believe our KPIs make our business and supply chain vulnerable to modern slavery. The directors believe that Chapelhouse are generally at low risk of exposure to modern slavery and human trafficking.
Actions we have taken in 2022/2023
During this time we have further reviewed our policies, practices, procedures and supplier engagement to ensure we remain comfortable we comply and actively promote anti-slavery and human trafficking in all our operations and that our suppliers do likewise.
We will continue to review these on an ongoing basis.
Statement approved by the Board of Directors on 19th July 2023
Signed by Nick Duffield, Financial Director for and on behalf of the Chapelhouse Group of Companies.