To make a positive, sustainable change to the housing crisis for our customers and communities.

B3Living is an exempt charity, and is a registered provider of social housing with the Regulator of Social Housing under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (Company No: 29876R), principally involved in the development and management of affordable housing, B3Living is a part of a group of companies that includes B3Living Development Ltd and Everlea Homes Ltd.

B3Living fully supports the principle aims of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (‘the Act’) and is committed to preventing slavery and human trafficking in our own operations and supply chains.

The B3Living Board has overall responsibility for ensuring that this policy complies with B3L’s legal and ethical obligations and that all those staff and third parties under its control comply with it.

This statement sets out the steps we have taken to target modern slavery for the financial year ending 31 March 2022.  We will continue to examine the effectiveness of our approach, to ensure continuous improvement as part of our ongoing commitment to keep slavery and human trafficking out of our business and our supply chains.

We are committed to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business dealings and relationships and implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in our UK business operations or in any of our extended supply chains.

We are also committed to ensuring there is transparency in our business and our approach to tackling modern slavery throughout its supply chain.  Consistent with our disclosure obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, we expect the same high standards from all of its suppliers, contractors and other third parties.   We also expect our suppliers to hold their own suppliers to the same standards as set out in this statement.

We establish a relationship of trust and integrity with all our suppliers, which is built upon mutually beneficial factors, our supplier selection and on-boarding procedure includes due diligence of the supplier's reputation, respect for the law, compliance with health, safety and environmental standards and references.

We have not been made aware of any allegations of human trafficking/slavery activities against any of our suppliers but if we were, then we would act immediately against the supplier and report it to the authorities.

We are committed to treating our staff with fairness and respect and pay the Real Living Wage as a minimum across all teams.  In 2021-22 we became a Real Living Wage Employer and are now working with our suppliers to ensure that this is paid to workers employed by our suppliers. We comply with all relevant employment legislation.

B3L conducts due diligence on all new suppliers during on-boarding and on existing suppliers at regular intervals, this includes:

• Assessing risks in the provision of particular services
• Auditing the suppliers, their health and safety standards, labour relations and employee contracts
• Requiring improvements to substandard employment practices
• Sanctioning suppliers that fail to improve their performance in line with our requirements

We require all suppliers to attest that:

• They do not use any form of forced, compulsory or slave labour
• Their employees work voluntarily and are entitled to leave work
• They provide each employee with an employment contract that contains a reasonable notice period for terminating their employment
• They do not require employees to post a deposit/bond and do not withhold their salaries for any reasons
• They do not require employees to surrender their passports or work permits as a condition of employment

Our approach to preventing modern slavery feeds into our extensive policy framework, which supports the prevention of slavery or human trafficking.  These include risk management, safeguarding, health and safety, recruitment, whistleblowing, procurement as well as housing and property management.

We also have a strong governance framework including robust standing orders, financial regulations, as well as compliance with the National Housing Federation’s Code of Conduct and Code of Governance.

We are implementing training in this area for our teams.

B3Living will only trade with those who have confirmed their compliance with the Modern Slavery Act. We will assess any instances of non-compliance, take appropriate action and report these to the Board. However, there were no instances of non-compliance during the period covered by this statement.

B3Living has a Whistleblowing (Confidential Reporting) Policy in place, which ensures full protection (and anonymity) of employees this policy was improved and updated in 2022.  Contractors with concerns are encouraged to raise concerns via the procurement process.  

Please find the previous Modern Slavery Statement of year 2021 here

Steve Woodcock

Chief Executive
5th July 2022