Modern Slavery Act

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Act 2015 Annual Statement – 2025/26

Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires all organisations to set out the steps it has taken during the financial year to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in any of its supply chains, and in any part of its own business.

The aim of this statement is to demonstrate that the Trust follows good practice, and all reasonable steps are being taken to prevent slavery and human trafficking.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides a comprehensive range of high quality acute care services, our more than 6,200 strong workforce serves a population in excess of 400,000 people across Wirral, Ellesmere Port, Neston, North Wales and the wider Northwest footprint. We operate across two main sites, these being Arrowe Park Hospital in Upton and Clatterbridge Hospital in Bebington.  We also provide a range of outpatient services from community locations at St Catherine’s Health Centre in Birkenhead and Victoria Central Health Centre in Wallasey.

The Trust has well established and robust recruitment and vetting procedures and seeks to ensure that suppliers operate in accordance with the provisions of the Modern Slavery Act.

The Trust has a total non-pay spend of c.£130m on goods, equipment and services. The Trust aims to achieve value for money and to promote social value through its contracting and purchasing activity, and the effective utilisation of the Trust’s spend contributes significantly to the quality of the patient environment and patient care.

The Trust supports the eradication of Modern Slavery through its procurement procedures and processes and is clear that it expects all potential suppliers to be fully compliant with the provisions of the Modern Slavery Act.

The Trust recognises that whilst there are laws in place to punish incidents of modern slavery, there is an opportunity to use its purchasing power to help prevent, identify and manage the risks of it occurring in its supply chain by adopting new processes and procedures in both its procurement activity and supplier management.

The Trust has adopted a number of measures already, which include:

• The use of Public Sector Frameworks where there is strong awareness of and monitoring for Modern Slavery in the supply chain.
• The mandatory exclusion of any bidder that has been convicted of a human trafficking offence, and the Trust’s contracts include
• The inclusion of terms and conditions conferring a legal responsibility on Contractors to support that same objective to eradicate slavery and human trafficking.

We acknowledge that these measures can be strengthened in line with the Procurement Policy Note PPN02/2023 (Tackling Modern Slavery in Government Supply Chains) for procurements/contracts that were conducted following PCR 2015 and Procurement Policy Note PPN009 (Tackling Modern Slavery in Government Supply Chains) for procurements commenced on or after 24 February 2025 so that:

• The new Procurement Act 2023 regulations that have superceded Public Contracts Regulations 2015 encourage preliminary market engagement to identify risks in the supply chain, to identify SMEs/VCSEs with the intention to encourage them to bid, and how social value themes and outcomes can be considered in each procurement
• All suppliers and their supply chain will be assessed taking information from the Central Digital Platform to mitigate risk to the Trust
• There is knowledge of the characteristics used to assess the risk of modern slavery in procurements including current global modern slavery risks in key sectors of concern such as cotton, PPE and polysilicon.
• We identify and manage the risks when procuring new contracts using a proportionate and risk assessed approach and will implement enhanced due diligence checks in high risk procurements.
• Risks are managed in existing contracts and arrangements.
• Procurement staff are appropriately trained so that there is a consistent level of understanding of the issues; that they are able to recognise and effectively manage procurement activity where there is a potential risk and are able to deploy mitigating strategies to reduce the possibility of modern slavery occurring in the Trust’s supply chain.

Our approach will be monitored and reviewed in line with the provisions of the Trust’s Procurement Strategy.

The Board approved this statement at its meeting on the 4^th June 2025.

Sir David Henshaw                                                                Janelle Holmes

Chair                                                                                      Chief Executive Officer