Enhancing our Human Rights Due Diligence

We’re committed to upholding our Human Rights Policy and respecting the rights of our workforce, the people involved in our value chain, and those impacted by our operations. As we move through the clean energy transition, we recognise that we will need to increase investment, including in industries that may be vulnerable to forced labor, such as the solar PV industry. To ensure compliance and delivery on our Responsible Business Charter, Modern Slavery Statement and Human Rights Policy, we partnered with Action Sustainability to take additional steps to ensure our value chain remains free of modern slavery. 

With Action Sustainability, we performed a gap assessment of our human rights practices and controls against British Standards Institution guidance. We also completed a risk assessment of all our procurement categories to identify potential human rights implications. We then turned the outcomes of the gap assessment review and risk assessment into a 3- year human rights action plan with a focus on processes, policies, capabilities, and due diligence. 

The steps we’ve taken have been acknowledged as ‘Advanced’ by the British Standards Institution (BSI). This has given us the opportunity for further collaboration with other utilities and BSI, as well as the Slave Free Alliance, who supported us in drafting the action plan. Since completing this work, we’ve reinforced our relationship with our US Construction team to conduct remote human rights capacity building in order to raise awareness of human rights risks in construction. These actions will be essential to ensure that we are able to uphold our human rights commitments as we expand investment in our supply chain.