Date: 1st March 2022

UN Global Compact

FAO: The Secretary General

Dear Sirs

Re: Statement of continued support by SceneSafe’s Group Managing Director

SceneSafe are fully committed to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact, covering Human Rights, Labour, Environment, and Anti-Corruption. We became a signatory to the UNGC in 2021.

In this, our first annual Communications on Progress, we share our plans and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. We are proud to be taking positive action towards making a better world by 2030 and will continue to share our progress with our stakeholders regularly, as well as taking any opportunity to advocate for others to do the same.

Human Rights: SceneSafe continues with its efforts to provide a great and rewarding place to work for our team. We want all of our staff to be fully engaged with our Company and be motivated to give their all, and we want their contribution to be recognised and rewarded. This is demonstrated by our continued support to the Investor in People Standard and UK Living Wage Foundation pledge. We will not tolerate forced, bonded or compulsory labour, human trafficking or any other kind of slavery within our own operations or within our supply chain and are committed to taking appropriate steps to ensure that everyone who works for SceneSafe (in any capacity) benefits from a working environment in which their fundamental rights and freedoms are respected. Our approach to preventing modern slavery forms part of our wider corporate responsibilities.

Our Group MD is responsible for the oversight of SceneSafe’s corporate responsibilities. We adopt procedures that contribute to ensuring modern slavery does not occur in our business or supply chains and we expect organisations with whom we do business to adopt and enforce policies to comply both with the legislation and our own ideals. Given the nature and location of our business, we consider ourselves to be at low risk of the potential for slavery or trafficking. Furthermore, our revenues are predominantly derived from countries deemed low risk by conventional sustainability indices, such as The Global Slavery Index (http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/index/). We also believe that SceneSafe’s business model and strategy are unlikely to create significant material risks of modern-day slavery or trafficking. We have a number of procedures in place which we consider to be appropriate to our business and effective in preventing modern slavery from occurring in our business or supply chains.

We treat our employees in a fair, lawful and professional manner and provide for fair working conditions, including health and safety, holiday entitlements and other benefits.
Robust recruitment processes are taken in line with employment laws, including: ‘right to work’ document checks; contracts of employment and checks to ensure everyone employed is 16 years old or above. We do not employ any staff on zero-hour contracts. We also make sure our people are aware of their contractual and statutory employment rights. We plan to implement the following in 2022 to further guard against the risk of modern slavery and trafficking:
Additional assessment of suppliers within our procurement function – including increasing our assessment requirements to include not only Tier One suppliers, but also Tier Two.

As part of our initiative to identify and to mitigate risk, we have sought confirmation by our Tier One (soon to include Tier Two) suppliers, in terms of spend, of their compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act. We operate a Supplier Code of Conduct, used for all new major suppliers or in re-tendering, which addresses the labour rights issues associated with modern day slavery and sets out the values and standards we expect of our suppliers. We have included a declaration to confirm support of the Code or where they have their own codes in place, sought confirmation they are complying with the same standards that we adhere to. Our Employee Handbook requires all of us to act ethically and we expect employees to comply with legal requirements at all times, putting our values into practice in everything we do. We have provided all staff with the means to enable anyone who has concerns (for example, how suppliers, customers, partners or employees behave) to raise their concerns confidentially.

Measurement of outcomes:
Our performance on human rights is something that our customer base are now regularly requesting updates on to ensure their own requirements are met. As mentioned earlier, our pledge to the UK Living Wage Foundation ensures that pay and rewards are reviewed annually. We are in the process of developing dashboards to track and publish any issues relating to human rights, which will be monitored at board level.

Labour: Assessment, policy and goals
Since SceneSafe was founded almost 27 years ago, we’ve kept employee engagement at the core of our business model. The link between culture, employee engagement and business results has always been a priority. Our diversity networks form a major part of our community’s hub, incorporating the Supporting Women in Business, Women in Power, BAME, Family, Pride, Veteran Engagement, Faith and Disability. In terms of statistics, gender diversity, which now stands at 60% female / 40% male. This has also had a positive impact on our management team, with an almost equal 50% male / female membership across most departments. We have 25% gender diversity at Board level.

Our ethnic diversity has increased in this financial year and our efforts to increase employee representation from the BAME community are continuing.

Environment:
SceneSafe recognises that it can be a better business by taking steps to minimise its impact on the environment. The Board takes ultimate responsibility for SceneSafe’s sustainability. SceneSafe continues to hold accreditation to ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management Standard. Last year the Company formalised its approach to sustainability and made good progress in key areas. At SceneSafe we believe we can be a successful business and do good to protect our people and the planet for future generations to come. We are motivated to drive change within our own organisation whilst working with our partners, our supply chain, and supporting our customers on their socially responsible journey through the services we provide.

Implementation: We recognise there is an impact of climate change and we have a role to play to mitigate the impact. This also offers opportunities to help our customers to mitigate their impact on the environment. Our commitment is demonstrated by the ambitious environmental targets we set in 2020. We are as stated above, fully accredited to ISO 14001. SceneSafe has made commitments and goals on its environmental impact in the business and its supply chain. Last year the Board approved a target over the longer term to aim for a net zero carbon business, and this will be achieved primarily by completing three key stages. We are developing underlying internal milestone targets in respect of the key stages to support our journey to carbon net zero. On the journey to reduce emissions, SceneSafe has engaged with a UK wide courier network offering a significant percentage of its delivery fleet in either hybrid or fully electric format. As well as committing to the use of green energy, SceneSafe has also installed low energy lighting across its Headquarters and that of its newly acquired factory which should come on line in Q3 2022.

Anti-Corruption:
Underpinning our approach to ethical behaviour is our Code of Conduct, which is applicable to all employees and to those who work for or on behalf of SceneSafe. The Code of Conduct sets out the expected standard of behaviour. SceneSafe also operates a Supplier Code of Conduct used for all suppliers which addresses ethical employment and labour rights issues associated with modern slavery, and sets out the values and standards we expect of our suppliers. The Supplier Code covers compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998, Equality Act 2010, Criminal Finances Act 2017, Bribery Act 2010, local health and safety regulations, anti-bribery and corruption, anti-modern slavery, and minimising environmental damage.

Suppliers are required to declare and commit that they support the Supplier Code, or where they have their own codes in place, confirm they are complying to a similar standard. We have procedures in place to enable all employees to raise any issues they may encounter.

We also operate an anti-bribery, corruption and tax evasion policy, which has been updated recently along with a review of employee training. The anti-bribery, corruption and tax evasion policy provides that we take a zero-tolerance approach to bribery, corruption and tax evasion and that we are committed to acting professionally, fairly and with integrity in all our dealings. The policy also sets out the types of behaviour which are unacceptable in the conduct of business and procedures to prevent bribery, corruption and tax evasion. We also operate a register which requires all employees to seek approval from their line manager and to disclose any gifts or hospitality received or given which is valued over the applicable disclosure threshold. Guidance on accepting or giving gifts and hospitality is contained in the anti-bribery, corruption and tax evasion policy and the gifts and hospitality register is reviewed by management.

SceneSafe is signed up to the UK Government Prompt Payment Code and pledges to pay all of its supply chain within 30 days. We do not withhold payments to suppliers to force discounts or use unethical methods in our business trading relationships. As a Company that deals almost exclusively with Government agencies across the world, we adopt an open and honest relationship across the supply chain.

We look forwards to continuing to work with the UN Global Compact and assist in its efforts to make a fairer society for all.

Yours sincerely
For SceneSafe (Part of SceneSafe Holdings Ltd)

Mike Hopson
Group Managing Director

(Direct mail to: mike.hopson@scenesafe.co.uk )