FullSizeRenderTake the Initiative…now!

The Modern Slavery Act became corporate law in October 2015 in the UK. The law requires any business or organisation operating on UK soil, with a turnover of £36+ million, to report annually to Government what the business is doing to eradicate human rights abuse, largely in the forms of slavery (bonded labour, child labour, forced labour), in its supply chain.

Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act is specific to evidencing “ethical transparency” within business supply chains. The present proposal is that companies will formally report when submitting audited accounts, starting for the 2016-17 financial year.

Hardscape assure those we support that are ethnical integrity is in place and meets the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act.

This is achieved by: (A) A commitment to the UN Guiding Principles for Business & Human Rights working within the Protect-Respect-Remedy framework. This commitment is measured with active participation in the Business Forums of the Human Rights Commission in UK and Ireland.

(B) A commitment to the 9 Base Code Principles of the Ethical Trading Initiative. This commitment is measured by our graduation to ‘achiever’ status within the ETI membership ranking categories due to us showing our work across all tiers to our supply. We are one of two companies in the UK hard landscape industry to achieve this ranking.

(C) In addition we work with ETI, DFID & FCO in the Rajasthan Sandstone Workers Group.

(D) A commitment to charitable works as part of our CSR. This is measured by our ongoing support to remove children (where we find them in our supply chain) to education.

Annually we financially support a school in Himachel Pradesh. Hardscape have moved beyond paper CSR and paying lip service to labour or human rights abuse: we are actively engaged, with UN or HMG recognised bodies, at ground truth of our sources involving all stakeholders to improve workers lives.

In this era of illegal quarries or black market quarries using all forms of slavery why risk your professional or moral integrity? Demand ‘ethical transparency’.