This statement is designed to satisfy the requirements of Section 54 of the Modern slavery Act 2015 (the “Act”), by setting out the approach of the British Council to modern slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and labour rights violations in its supply chains.
We continue to take our responsibility to prevent modern slavery and trafficking within our supply chain seriously.
1. Our status, operations, and supply chain
- The British Council is registered as a charity under registration numbers 209131 (England and Wales) and SC037733 (Scotland) and is incorporated by Royal Charter.
- We work in over 100 countries connecting millions of people with the United Kingdom through programmes and services in the English language, the arts and education.
- This statement relates to the British Council and its subsidiary entities.
- The British Council has a diverse and substantial supply chain, with sourcing carried out both centrally and within local markets across the globe and is guided by its corporate policies.
2. Current procurement policy and processes
- The British Council follows UK public sector procurement legislation and ensures that all potential and incumbent suppliers are dealt with professionally, fairly and ethically and that we always uphold the principles of sustainable procurement. Our procedures also comply with law and address environmental management, health and safety, social value and equality legislation.
- Suppliers are evaluated on criteria including their approach to risk; environmental sustainability; health and safety; social value; modern slavery and safeguarding.
- We require our suppliers and their supply chains to maintain their standards while supplying us. We have a variety of channels both internal and external facing which facilitate the raising of concerns over supplier behaviour.
- Standard procurement documents have been amended to incorporate the British Council Supplier Code of Conduct into our procurement process and express compliance is a mandated requirement as part of a compliant bid response. The code underlines good practice across all key areas and reinforces the requirement that suppliers must be aware of our modern slavery policy and maintain adherence to it when working the British Council.
3. Due diligence process
A more rigorous set of modern slavery assessment questions have been introduced that aligns with current legislative thresholds for procurements, and this approach has been mandated for all in high-risk categories. Whilst, for lower-value procurements, we have designed a series of questions that concentrate on the methods the supplier proposes when delivering our contract. These concentrate on how suppliers will mitigate risk of slavery in their operations.
4. Identifying and managing risks
- Our standard supplier contract and grant agreements include modern slavery and human trafficking undertakings. We expect our supply chain to respect and comply with all applicable laws, including The Act, and under our standard contracts and grants, the British Council reserves the right to terminate its arrangements with a supplier which is found to be in breach of The Act.
- The British Council has an established whistleblowing channel that allows the ability for individuals and organisations impacted by modern slavery to report and for the organisation to conduct investigations which are triaged and managed by a dedicated specialist modern slavery case management team. The whistleblowing channel is designed to be a safe environment for submitting an initial report which includes local telephone numbers, QR codes and direct email contact points. Awareness is supported by activities such as on-site supplier staff briefings, posters in British Council buildings and frequent social media releases. When an individual makes contact this will be managed by the specialist Modern Slavery Case Management team.
- An extensive supplier engagement programme has been undertaken in 2025. Suppliers in high-risk categories were identified by region and those with a spend of £30,000 and above were requested to complete a questionnaire. 25 responses have now been received, and the responses have been assessed to identify medium to high-risk suppliers.
5. Training
- The British Council has developed a new eLearning course, Raising Awareness of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. This course is now a mandatory training module for all British Council staff and re-certification is required every three years.
- All procurement staff will complete the UK Government Commercial College course, Key skills for tackling modern slavery in public supply chains. This added level of training is considered important for our procurement staff who all manage international supply chains and so are key leaders of implementation.
6. Key performance indicators (KPIs)
- The Modern Slavery Case Management Governance team will meet monthly to discuss management of risks and improvement opportunities. The team will respond to risks in line with agreed response times, and report on performance.
- Our main training KPI states that by the end of the financial year 2025 – 2026 90% of global staff to have completed the Raising Awareness of Modern slavery and Human Trafficking eLearning training course.
- Proactive activities to embed the Modern Slavery Whistleblowing channel will have been undertaken in the top 20 high risk countries.
- Responders to the Modern slavery questionnaire that been identified as high risk will have completed a follow up interview.
- An external collaboration with a key supply chain partner will be underway with us jointly working towards recognition for the initiative we design.
Next steps
The British Council is committed to continuous improvement in this area and will review and monitor and, where necessary, enhance our standards, policies and procedures, as well as improve the training and communications about The Act.