Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement

Organisation’s structure and business

Ogel IT Ltd. is an SME based in Stevenage with a wide customer base spanning private and public sectors across the UK.  For years we have been providing flexible, secure, and cost-effective IT services by helping our customers understand their business requirements, and then designing and delivering solutions that’s right for them.

We are a small operation utilising our contractors and supply chain to deliver our services.

Our supply chain

Our supply chain includes large multinational organisations, publicly owned bodies as well as a range of small and medium sized suppliers providing goods, services and works for OGEL IT LTD. To ensure all suppliers within our extended supply chain comply with our values, we have in place a Supply Chain Charter. This reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships, and to implementing and enforcing appropriate systems and controls.

Our policies on slavery and human trafficking

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 Supply Chain Charter sets out our expectations from the supply chain to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking. In addition, our Speak-Up policy provides a reporting method for our staff and others to alert us to any concerns they may have. This provides a second line of defence to assuring our compliance with modern slavery, which is managed by our Compliance team.

Due diligence process for slavery and human trafficking

As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk of slavery and human trafficking within OGEL IT’s business processes and functions, we have undertaken a high-level due diligence exercise on the OGEL IT’s direct suppliers, requiring them to read and sign our Supply Chain Charter and ask them where necessary to make available their compliance with modern slavery and human trafficking legislation.

Our implementation of policies pertaining to the understanding, identifying, and reporting of modern slavery and human trafficking within our organisation, supply chain or partnerships are under annual review and made available to our employees through a document library, where we encourage all employees to keep themselves up to date and educated on each policy.  We aim to implement further risk-based assessments, as set out below.

Training

OGEL IT make modern slavery and human trafficking awareness material available for guidance and independent study for all employees on our document library, or through request.  However, we are planning to incorporate an annual campaign when our Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking Statement is updated at the beginning of every financial year.  This will include an updated copy of the statement and brochure with information referring to our policies and guidance on understanding, identifying, and reporting of modern slavery and human trafficking.

Further steps

• Issue all our existing suppliers with a copy of our Supply Chain Charter asking for their compliance in the prevention of modern slavery and human trafficking.
• Develop a new Modern Slavery Policy detailing our approach to managing modern slavery and human trafficking risk
• Review our relevant policies, including the Supply Chain Charter and Speak Up Policy to ensure they remain fit for purpose.
• In line with Government guidance, we are rolling out the Government Modern Slavery Assessment Tool to assess the risk of modern slavery when taking on new business.

This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes our modern slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 March 2023. It was approved by senior management on 30 Jan 2022.