Max Fordham LLP is a limited liability partnership, owned entirely by members from within its current staff applying the principles of Employee Ownership. All employees have the opportunity to become members of the LLP and to share in its ownership after a qualifying period. There are no subsidiaries or associated companies.

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires large businesses to produce an annual Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement. As a medium-sized business, we are not legally required to produce such a statement. However, we recognise that the intent behind the legislation is for businesses to encourage their supply chains to do more than the legal minimum, and so we are pleased to produce this statement summarising the actions taken during the financial year ending 5 April 2023 on a voluntary basis as if s.54 of the Act applied to us.

We confirm our commitment against human trafficking and slavery of any form. As a Practice we are therefore committed to ensuring that we treat all members of the Practice, our suppliers and other stakeholders in an open and transparent way and to satisfy ourselves that we only engage organisations whose treatment of their staff and own supply chain reflect our values.

Our supply chains comprise two distinct groups:

• General business, IT and office supplies including equipment and services, and other associated direct supplies to the business.
• Professional services where we occasionally sub-contract part of the services we are appointed to provide.

Our assessments have identified these as presenting a low overall risk of slavery or human trafficking. However, we have also designed procedures to satisfy ourselves where appropriate that our suppliers have systems in place to prevent this within their organisations.

In the 2022-23 financial year relevant to this statement we have:

• Continued to review and improve our internal procurement due diligence processes to seek to ensure we are engaging responsible, well managed organisations who reflect our values.
• Reviewed and promoted information and training tools internally to increase understanding of the issue.
• Achieved reaccreditation as a Living Wage Employer committing our Practice to ensure all staff and on-site sub-contractors and third party staff are paid the real UK or London Living Wage as appropriate.
• Discussed and considered anti-slavery and human trafficking at senior levels of the Practice including at Management Group, Director and Partners’ meetings.

We recognise that this is an issue requiring our ongoing commitment and in this current year are:

• keeping our systems and processes under review to identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
• continuing to seek to increase awareness both internally and among our supply chain.