Modern Slavery Act
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This statement is made on behalf of Distant Voices Academy CIC pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (the "Act") and constitutes our slavery and human trafficking statement.
Distant Voices Academy CIC is registered in England and Wales and has offices in Stevenage. We have approximately 10 people spread across our three Locations. We are an Internet Training Academy for the Charitable sector.
Our Approach
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Although the likelihood of an incident of modern slavery in our business or our supply chains is low, we work to the highest ethical and professional standards and value transparency and accountability in all our dealings. We have a zero-tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking and expect the same high standards from those we work with.
We have put in place a Modern Slavery Policy which is supported by other internal policies and HR processes such as our Whistleblowing Policy and Disciplinary Rules and Procedure.
Responsibility
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The Directors are ultimately responsible for compliance internally and in our supplier relationships.
Supplier Due Diligence
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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.
At the beginning of 2023 we decided to expand our Compliance programme to include due diligence checks on all existing suppliers and adding steps to our supplier on-boarding procedure(s). These checks were designed to include identifying those in our supply chain that adhered to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 by providing its customers with a statement of compliance in addition to ongoing checks to ensure compliance with data privacy and Critical National Infrastructure legislation and regulation.
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In April 2023 we took a big step in launching a revised Supplier Management Policy that we felt supported and catered for all our interested parties, be it legislation or our customers. The process started by ensuring we had identified all suppliers and noted where we believed a supplier was critical to our business, be it a supply of core technologies we relied upon or processors of personal data, both areas required ongoing management and review.
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We will ensure any new relationships engaged complete the required due diligence levels we have introduced even in the challenging times placed upon us by the pandemic, meeting the high standards we hold ourselves to.
Any supplier that should adhere to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 but falls short of evidencing the requirements of the Act will be reviewed on a per case basis. Where compliance to the Act cannot be verified through our due diligence checks, and the supplier has advised a statement will not be made available, a new supplier(s) will be identified.