Modern Slavery Statement
This statement is made pursuant to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It outlines the steps taken by NEC Group1 during the financial year ended on 31 March 2025 (“FY25”) as part of our commitment to uphold and implement high standards of governance and ethical behaviour across our business.
We are committed to ensuring that slavery is not taking place in any part of our operations or, to the maximum extent possible, in any of our supply chains and to acting ethically and with integrity in all of our business relationships.
Our business
NEC Group is the UK’s leading live events business operating in exhibitions, conferences, music, sports, family entertainment and hospitality. Our venues include the NEC, ICC, bp Pulse LIVE, Utilita Arena Birmingham and the VOX Conference Centre. During FY25 we also operated the national ticketing agency, The Ticket Factory, award winning caterer Amadeus and hospitality brand Amplify.
During FY25 our business was organised into three business units:
(i) Exhibitions – which operates the NEC, the UK’s largest exhibition venue which welcomes around 2.3 million visitors and 40,000 exhibiting companies to more than 160 exhibitions every year;
(ii) Conventions – which operates the ICC and the VOX Conference Centre, and delivers all types of events and live experiences from national conferences to regional sales meetings, immersive AGMs to intimate board meetings across each of NEC Group’s five venues; and
(iii) Arenas – which operates bp Pulse LIVE and Utilita Arena Birmingham, two of the busiest, large scale indoor entertainment venues in Europe, welcoming everything from music, sport and comedy to family entertainment and live theatre.
Our policies on slavery and human trafficking
We are committed to ensuring that there is no slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains or our business.
We also adhere to standards of responsible conduct and train employees to treat each other with respect, and to adhere to laws, regulations, and standards such as those referenced above.
Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking
We have a zero-tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking. As part of the NEC Group’s due diligence process to identify and mitigate risks related to slavery and human trafficking, we put in place systems to:
(i) Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains;
(ii) Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains; and
(iii) Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains.
In addition, we have established policies and procedures in place to protect whistleblowers.
Supplier adherence to our values
We work with many suppliers of goods and services, event organisers, concert promoters and operational support partners. To ensure that our supply chains comply with our policies, we continue to develop our supplier due diligence processes and require suppliers to provide compliance information as part of our tender and other purchasing processes.
Our purchasing arrangements require suppliers to comply generally with all applicable laws and statutory requirements. They also include contractual commitments relating to tackling the risk of bribery, corruption, and tax evasion in our supply chains.
We have a compliance team in relation to this policy, which consists of involvement from Procurement, People, Finance and Legal teams within NEC Group.
Our effectiveness in combating slavery and human trafficking
In line with our commitment to treat people fairly and to ensure that there is no slavery or human trafficking in our business, we are always looking to improve our processes and systems. In FY25, we carried out the following action:
(i) We completed the process of ensuring that due diligence questionnaires had been received from all NEC Group suppliers as part of the new supplier risk assessment process that we introduced during the financial year ended 31 March 2022 (“FY22”). Three new suppliers were identified as potentially higher risk suppliers during FY25. These suppliers were assessed as having adequate policies and procedures in place to provide comfort that risks related to slavery and human trafficking are managed appropriately;
(ii) All new suppliers in FY25 have signed up to terms containing anti-slavery and human trafficking compliance obligations and all continuing suppliers have provided confirmation of their continuing compliance with such obligations;
(iii) We have completed an annual review of our Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy; and
(iv) We have reviewed the effectiveness of our ‘code of conduct’ (which brings together our key policies and values in respect of how we expect our suppliers to act in a fair and ethical way and is now embedded within our new supplier setup process, such that a supplier is only onboarded if this is agreed to) following the bringing together of our Group Procurement & Catering Procurement teams into one central Procurement function. This review concluded that the existing process remained fit for purpose.
During the next financial year, we intend to take the following additional steps to combat slavery and human trafficking:
(i) We plan to review and reassess our approach to Modern Slavery risk management following the outsourcing of catering services (from 1 September 2025) and ticketing services (in 2024) to best-in-class service providers.
Training
To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide training to relevant colleagues via our online training platform and monitor completion levels across the business on a monthly basis.
Board Approval
This statement was approved by the Board of Directors on 28 July 2025.
Melanie Smith
CEO, NEC Group
[1] References to NEC Group in this statement are to LHTCA New Holdco Limited (a Jersey company) and its subsidiary companies, including The National Exhibition Centre Limited (UK company registration number 979395).