Statement for the year ending 31 March 2025
At Wiggin we strive to live our values and be visionary, authentic, unified, responsible and excellent in everything we do.
Applying each of our values, we are committed to legal compliance and ethical business practices in all of our operations, and as part of that we continually seek to improve our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking in all its forms.
Our structure
Wiggin LLP has several group companies, including a branch office in Brussels, and other England and Wales registered entities. Wiggin LLP has its head office in England and Wales.
Our supply chain
As providers of legal services, although our business and its supply chain has a limited risk of association with modern slavery and human trafficking, we have implemented and maintain an anti-slavery and human trafficking policy and provide regular mandatory training to all staff raising awareness of modern slavery and human trafficking.
Our aim is to foster long-term relationships with our critical business suppliers, and we are committed to carrying out appropriate due diligence on any current or future suppliers and to strengthening our policies and systems to ensure compliance.
Our policy on anti-slavery and human trafficking
Our anti-slavery and human trafficking 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.
Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking
We have a zero-tolerance policy to slavery and human trafficking. To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our values we continue to improve our supply chain compliance programme.
We have a dedicated compliance team, which includes a representative from senior management of the firm and the COLP. We also have a dedicated procurement function that sits within the compliance team. The procurement function co-ordinates between the compliance, business management, and legal teams where necessary to ensure a thorough review of third parties, whether current or new. The procurement function is responsible for ensuring that the system of onboarding suppliers includes all necessary safeguards and due diligence processes.
We are partnered with a leading third-party risk management company who provide our third-party risk management platform. This platform provides us a centralised third party register along with appropriate supplier assessments allowing us to ensure our third parties and supplier contracts contain all necessary provisions with regard to slavery and human trafficking in accordance with our values and applicable law. The platform along with our procurement policy is well embedded into the firm now.
A dedicated procurement manager has been engaged to administer the platform and oversee all third-party due diligence as well as supplier onboarding. This demonstrates our commitment to ensuring we comply with our legal requirements regarding anti-slavery and human trafficking.
Training
We provide regular mandatory training to all our staff regarding modern slavery and human trafficking.
We induct all new staff on our procurement policy and procedures.
Accountability
We require all members, partners, employees, officers, and directors of the firm, to comply with our anti-slavery and human trafficking policy including undertaking training.
Further steps
We will:
- Continue to work to improve our third-party risk management platform through its functionality for users and third parties.
- Seek to continuously improve and revise our policies and procedures to align with the needs of the business, our values and applicable law.
- Ensure our revised policies and process are communicated throughout the firm.
- Continue to induct new joiners to the firm on our procurement and third-party onboarding policies.
- Continue to review our approach to anti-modern slavery to evaluate its effectiveness.
- Continue to improve our supplier screening process and risk-based assessment of suppliers utilising our third-party risk management platform.
- Establish a supplier code of conduct that reflects our core values and secures adherence to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 as well as all relevant legal requirements.
- Invest in training and development for those responsible for preventing modern slavery such as the Procurement Manager.
- Boost support for the procurement function with training in the compliance team.
- Expand and embed knowledge of the issues and risks around modern slavery and human trafficking to all appropriate staff across the network of offices.
- Incorporate an assessment of modern slavery and human trafficking risk in our annual operational risk review process.
This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes our Group’s slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 March 2025. It was approved by the Partnership Board on 12 November 2025.
