Medivet Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 tackles the serious and brutal crime of slavery. Modern slavery encompasses slavery, servitude, human trafficking and forced labour. The victims of modern slavery come from all walks of life and can be found all over the globe. Medivet has a zero tolerance approach to any form of modern slavery.
We strictly prohibit the use of forced labour, child labour, and any form of human trafficking. We are committed to upholding fundamental human rights and promoting ethical business practices. We expect the same high standards from all of our contractors, suppliers and other business partners, and we expect that our suppliers will hold their own suppliers to the same high standards.
Our business
Medivet is a leading veterinary group and is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (registered number 03481736). The Medivet group includes a number of subsidiaries and separately constituted legal entities which it ultimately controls.
We offer veterinary services throughout the UK based on a unique hub and spoke system providing an extensive range of services to our customers focused on the care of their pets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We operate 27 centres, 24 hours a day.
Our Support Centre is in Watford UK. We have over 3000 colleagues employed in our business throughout the UK.
Our procurement function
Our procurement function is responsible for the purchasing of goods and services that support the operations of our business including within our practices.
These include medical consumables and equipment, animal drugs and feeds, office supplies, marketing materials, IT hardware and software, services such as cleaning, waste management, office fixtures and fittings during fit out, refurbishments and maintenance, uniforms and catering, hospitality services such as hotels for conferences and training events, vehicles and accommodation, security systems and couriers as well as recruitment agents and temporary staff provision.
We also purchase certain professional services which include those delivered by medical professionals and financial advisors and procure insurance through insurance brokers.
Our policies
We operate a number of internal policies to ensure that we are conducting business in an ethical and transparent manner. These include:
- Anti-slavery policy. This policy sets out the organisation’s stance on modern slavery and explains how employees can identify any instances of this and where they can go for help.
- We operate a robust recruitment policy, including conducting eligibility to work in the UK checks for all employees to safeguard against human trafficking or individuals being forced to work against their will.
- We operate a whistleblowing policy so that all employees know that they can raise concerns about how colleagues are being treated, or practices within our business or supply chain, without fear of reprisals.
- This policy explains the manner in which we behave as an organisation and how we expect our employees and supplier to act when engaging on our behalf or with us.
Due diligence and risk assessment - employees
Our employment strategy is based on attracting, developing and retaining the best talent and building the best place to work in the veterinary industry. We recognise everyone is unique and has special contributions to make in delivering our purpose which is to provide exceptional care that’s always there.
Colleague engagement is at the heart of our approach and we want to inspire and empower our people to use their talents positively in our communities, whether that be locally, regionally, nationally or ultimately at a global level.
We are committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Anti-Slavery 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.
As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk we have in place systems to:
- Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains.
- Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains.
- Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains.
- Protect whistle blowers.
Our recruitment and employment procedures include appropriate pre-employment screening of all staff to determine right to work in the UK.
Due diligence and risk assessment - suppliers
Medivet operates a supplier policy and maintains a preferred supplier list. We conduct due diligence on all suppliers before allowing them to become a preferred supplier. This due diligence includes an online search to ensure that a particular organisation has never been convicted of offenses relating to modern slavery.
In addition, as part of our due diligence process:
- (For UK based suppliers) we check that they pay their employees at least the national minimum wage / national living wage (as appropriate);
- (For international suppliers) we check that they pay their employees any prevailing minimum wage applicable within their country of operations; and
In order to support the above, we have teams who focus on compliance, which involves the following departments:
- Legal
- Human Resources
- Procurement
Internal engagement
To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chain and our business, we provide training to our colleagues.
Medivet’s slavery and human trafficking statement is made pursuant to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 'Transparency in Supply Chains' and constitutes our slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 2023. The statement will be updated annually.
Chris Cools, CEO
Medivet Group Limited
December 2023