Urbanest Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement

This statement is made in accordance with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes the Urbanest UK anti-slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ended 31st December 2023. Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. It takes various forms, such as slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking, all of which have in common the deprivation of a person’s liberty by another in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.

We are committed to improving our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking.

Urbanest UK is a student accommodation developer and operator. We have 8 operational properties all based in central London. In addition we have a number of properties in our development pipeline which are due to become operational in a phased manner over the next few years.

Urbanest UK will not tolerate any slavery or human trafficking within any part of our business or supply chain. All suspected infringements of this policy must be reported to a senior member of staff within the business and will be investigated robustly under the supervision of an executive level staff member. In addition Urbanest UK has a whistle blowing policy and process where concerns can be raised in a number of ways designed to encourage staff members to come forward with suspected wrongdoing and ensuring appropriate escalation paths are followed.

The Urbanest UK supply chain can be broken down in to two broad categories.

Building construction supply chain

Being all materials and services purchased to develop our sites, this category consists of professional services (e.g. lawyers, architects, planning consultants, quantity surveyors) and construction services (e.g. main build contract to construct a student accommodation building).

Building management supply chain

Being building management services, this consists of all the services required to operate and maintain our portfolio of buildings. This includes utilities, planned and unplanned maintenance, cleaning, security and lifecycle costs.

Building construction supply chain

Urbanest UK considers the highest risk part of its supply chain is within the construction of our buildings. The vast majority of our buildings are constructed by large prime contractors with well documented and robust policies and processes to mitigate the risk of modern slavery and human trafficking. Where Urbanest works directly with smaller contractors we perform our own due diligence to mitigate the risk of modern slavery and human trafficking. In addition our procurement policy and contract approval processes address modern slavery and human trafficking.

Building management supply chain

Urbanest UK directly employ most of the workers that work at our operational buildings including night security guards, front desk staff and reactive maintenance staff. Urbanest UK has procedures in place designed to prevent human trafficking or slavery within our employee base. These include but are not limited to reference checks, checks on original right to work documents and checks that bank account details provided for the payment of salary match the name of the employee. Where discrepancies arise further investigation is carried out to ensure the employee is not subject to modern slavery or human trafficking. In addition our procurement policy and contract approval processes address modern slavery and human trafficking.

Urbanest provide annual training to all staff on modern slavery and human trafficking.