The West Midlands Modern Slavery Prevention Hub is a collation of information and resources for students, staff and universities to help create slavery-free campuses across the West Midlands.
The Hub is produced by It’s a Penalty in partnership with the West Midlands Anti Slavery Network, with support from Health Education England, as an output of the West Midlands Slavery Free Campus Alliance (WMSFCA). Guided by the Slavery Free Campus Blueprint from Nottingham Rights Lab, the WMSFCA focuses on addressing students’ vulnerabilities to modern slavery, awareness-raising among students and staff on the risks of modern slavery and how to prevent it, advocating for students studying frontline courses (policing, paramedics, healthcare, social workers etc) to have modern slavery training, and making key recommendations for universities to tackle modern slavery.
Modern slavery is of significant scale and complexity – it is estimated in the UK that there are up to 136,000 people trapped in modern slavery (CSJ). In the West Midlands, there are at least 4,200 victim-survivors of modern slavery (WM Police).
Modern slavery is a major risk for universities across the UK to address.
Students
With growing concerns regarding the cost of living crisis across the UK, students may be increasingly vulnerable to modern slavery if they are struggling financially. Evidence shows that students are at particular risk of forced sexual exploitation and county lines during their time at university.
International students have been identified as one of the most at risk groups, with reports of several cases where overseas students have vanished from courses and then been found working in exploitative conditions.
Throughout their future careers, university students should be equipped with essential information about modern slavery in order to empower them to help potential survivors. Frontline and healthcare workers are often the only professionals to come into contact with the victims of modern slavery. As such, it is important that all future healthcare workers and first responders are able to identify and respond to signs of modern slavery.
Staff
University staff may also be vulnerable to modern slavery, particularly those conducting ‘unskilled labour’ on-site. According to Nottingham Rights Lab, high-risk categories for on-site staffing include construction, catering, cleaning, security, and maintenance. Furthermore, where the right to work in the UK may not be accurately confirmed by HR procedures, the living wage is not paid, temporary contracts are used, and/or work is outsourced to a third party, there are risks of modern slavery taking place.
University Policy & Practice
Currently, many universities are successfully embedding their Modern Slavery Act response to supply chain risk within existing procurement policy and practice. However, research has found that most universities could be doing more to address modern slavery risks and become fully compliant with the MSA requirements.
