Modern slavery statement

Statement for financial year ending 31 July 2025

Introduction

Jisc is the UK digital, data and technology agency. We provide managed and brokered products and services, enhanced with expertise and intelligence, to provide sector leadership and enable digital transformation to our members UK wide.

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“act”) was introduced to help eradicate slavery, forced labour and human trafficking in the operations and supply chains of companies. This statement is made pursuant to Section 54, Part 6 of the Act and includes information about the Jisc Group, its own operations and supply chains, and how we are approaching the eradication of slavery and human trafficking within our business.

Our commitment

Jisc adopts a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery, human trafficking and any form of bribery and corruption within our operations or supply chain.

Jisc is committed to preventing and mitigating exploitation, bribery and corruption. We will not accept modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking anywhere within our operations or supply chain. We are committed to undertaking a risk analysis of our supply chain to further develop a plan to improve transparency and accountability in our supply chain.

Our commitment is set out in further detail in our modern slavery policy.

Jisc Group structure

The Jisc Group includes Jisc as the parent company with two active subsidiary companies - Jisc Services Limited and Jisc International Singapore Pte Limited.

Jisc is the only company in the Jisc Group which is required to produce a Slavery and human trafficking statement, though the risk areas and activities outlined in this statement apply equally to all companies in the Jisc Group.

Jisc operations

As at 31 July 2025, we directly employ 1,367 staff as a combination of office-based staff and home-workers. We are confident that our own operations are free of modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking. Colleagues across the Jisc Group work under comparable terms and conditions that are in accordance with UK employment law, and we are an accredited Living Wage Employer. Health, safety and well-being support is in place for all staff including access to a network of Mental Health First Aiders and specialist counselling support.

With guidance from Unseen (a modern slavery charity), we previously reviewed our recruitment processes to ensure we are doing all we can to mitigate modern slavery. We have focused on raising awareness and incorporating this into our interactions with candidates at the hiring and onboarding stage.

Policies

We have a range of employment policies in place which ensure that our employees are fairly treated, supported, remunerated and understand the behaviour expected by the organisation. Our Equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) policy was launched in February 2023 and is reviewed annually. Our employment policies are listed in our modern slavery policy and are available on request.

Supply chains and risk areas

We contract with a range of suppliers, from large international IT companies to local cleaning and catering companies. Our risk analysis of our supply chain is allowing us a better understanding of supply contracts where there is a greater risk of exploitation.

In accordance with the Procurement Act 2023 and preceding legislation, the EU public contracts regulations 2015, we also create, negotiate and have access to a series of frameworks and umbrella agreements put in place with a group of suppliers who fit the specified criteria. These frameworks are available to our members, who rely on us to have completed modern slavery compliance checks on suppliers. We are exploring how we can improve our oversight of these suppliers.

We acknowledge that some of our supply chains involved in the mining of some rare earth materials (such as cobalt) required to produce computer hardware and devices are untraceable and that there are limitations in understanding the degree of the risk of exploitation.

Our modern slavery policy describes supplier obligations in reporting breaches of the modern slavery regulations and our whistleblowing policy explains how members of staff can also report breaches.

Due diligence

As part of our approach to maintaining a supply chain that is free of modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking, we require commercial organisations meeting the criteria within the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to provide a copy or link to their anti-slavery statement. Our own modern slavery policy is shared with suppliers during procurement processes. Suppliers within high-risk areas are required to complete a self-assessment questionnaire.

We are reviewing how this can be rolled out further or where additional due diligence checks need to be implemented. Relevant advice is sent to organisations that have returned a self-assessment questionnaire where there are gaps or opportunities to improve their organisation’s modern slavery commitment.

Through our standard contract we require suppliers to report any breach or suspected breach of the Act associated with our contract to us immediately. We reserve our rights to terminate contracts with suppliers in the event that there is evidence of non-compliance with the Act. We have not received any reports of potential or actual breaches of the Act and no procurements or contracts have been terminated in the reporting year as a result of concerns regarding compliance with the Act.

Training and awareness raising

Awareness raising amongst our employees is key to ensuring that risk areas are recognised, and employees know what to do if they become aware of any concern associated with exploitation. All employees are required to complete a mandatory modern slavery awareness training course and a whistleblowing course when they join Jisc and a refresher every two years. The modern slavery policy, whistleblowing policy and this statement are also actively shared with all employees to help colleagues understand their responsibility as individuals to report behaviour which they believe suggests a breach of the Act.

In addition, Jisc’s intranet has information to support staff with queries around modern slavery. This includes identifying signs of possible modern slavery and how to report it.

Most of our Procurement and Supplier Management staff are trained through the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS). Further modern slavery training is available for individuals in Jisc teams that deal specifically with high-risk suppliers and all members of these teams that deal with supply chain management.

Actions in the last year

In the last reporting year we:

• Shared our 2024 modern slavery statement through the Home Office modern slavery registry.
• Reviewed how to engage more with our suppliers about modern slavery – reviewing self-assessment questionnaires from high-risk suppliers and bid submissions and working with suppliers to advise and support where appropriate.
• Continued to provide enhanced training for the departments overseeing high risk area suppliers to raise further awareness, and roll out more widely as we believe is necessary
• Identified risks in new procurements and our supply chain using the Policy Procurement Note (PPN) Tackling Modern Slavery in Government Supply Chains table of characteristics and complete appropriate checks on subcontractors. Suppliers listed in a tender undergo the same checks as the supplier.
• Reviewed supplier’s Modern slavery statements regularly to assess existing suppliers and aim to request these annually from suppliers along with a review of our annual supplier check programme.
• Maintained our affiliate membership of Electronics Watch, a monitoring organisation to audit the supply chain of technology components.
• Shared our modern slavery policy with suppliers and requested that they cascade it to their employees and upload their statements onto the gov.uk site.

Future plans

In the coming financial year (from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026), we will build on our work to date and will:

• Review modern slavery classification areas defining clear areas of Jisc operations that carry modern slavery risks.
• Integrate Sustainability and modern slavery standards and discussions into service reviews with critical suppliers.
• Explore the opportunity of an internal modern slavery risk dashboard to monitor spend levels and regularity in areas deemed high risk.
• Review the question set within our self-assessment questionnaire to ensure this remains fit for purpose.
• Maintain our affiliate membership of Electronics Watch, a monitoring organisation to audit the supply chain of technology components.
• Explore the opportunity to send self-assessment questionnaires to additional suppliers in future.
• Continue the risk analysis of our supply chain to identify areas for improvement via the modern slavery self-assessment questionnaire

This statement will be made available on the Jisc website via a link from Jisc’s homepage. It will, in addition, be provided on request to all those organisations in receipt of Jisc services.