If you asked a local authority or police force where labour exploitation and modern slavery occurred in their areas, they might identify a business based on prior intelligence and knowledge. They may equally tell you about the sectors repeatedly highlighted by the National Crime Agency or the Gangmaster and Labour Abuse Authorities industry sector reports. The narrative of hard-to-reach and hidden communities often underpins a discourse of saving people from modern slavery. These narratives are based on an intelligence and individualised construction of the issues surrounding the broader concept of labour exploitation and unlawful business practice.
Our research and policy engagement work demonstrates that this narrative and approach needs development to ensure local authorities, enforcement agencies and academics enhance how they tackle these pervasive issues. The Work, Informalisation and Place Research Centre (WIP) at Nottingham Trent University explores how we can further ensure that unlawful and immoral employment practices in a defined location can be identified and potentially improved to become compliant and safe places to work for residents. More specifically, how can spatial analysis and innovative research techniques that identify the location and drivers of these problematic sites of employment help us understand and tackle these challenges?
Our research started as an in-depth study of hand car washes arising from an observation concerning their increased presence on our roads. This generated a broader range of research projects to better understand how informalisation impacts upon work and workers in the UK. This research informs several authorities and agencies in developing new ways to understand where unlawful practice may occur in your communities. We want to share it with local authorities to explore how they may use these insights locally. The previous Director of Labour Market Enforcement recommended that local authorities should host local licensing schemes for sectors with a heightened risk of non-compliance to a range of rules and laws. We agree with this approach but also recognise that without data and insights on where to look and what to prioritise, this will be difficult for local authorities where resources are under pressure. The release of our new report funded by the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre and our work alongside the Responsible Car Wash Scheme document and develop a new set of tools to support local authorities in mapping and identifying where poor business practice.
Over the last three years, we have developed datasets for hand car washes, nail bars and garment workshops in a wide range of locations across the UK to help us build tools to support organisations in tackling labour market exploitation, unsafe work practices and environmental harms. WIP has used a series of analytical techniques to provide predictive insights into where you should find businesses operating informally across England and Wales at the neighbourhood level (work to translate this to Scotland and Northern Ireland is underway). Based on our in-depth research into these sectors, we currently have predictive maps for hand car washes and nail bars. In addition, we developed an Informal Economy Index which uses a more comprehensive evidence base to explore where individuals and groups who may work at the more informal end of the employment spectrum are likely to live and work. Our insights have supported HMRC’s compliance teams in increasing tax returns in parts of Greater Manchester. Through work with the Gangmaster and Labour Abuse Authority, we have helped inform one local authority of significant business rate opportunities they were missing out on.
We have watched with concern the current lack of progress on the once-discussed Employment Bill that our government discussed. We supported the innovation of a single enforcement body for labour market enforcement if it was given the required powers and resources to make a difference. The current policy conversation, however, has been racing in the opposite direction by promoting the relaxation of existing legislation to allow businesses to be less supportive of their workers. We argue that rules and regulations can help businesses to operate on a fair playing field, and authorities need additional powers to challenge poor practices to ensure their communities are free of unlawful and immoral actions.
Rich Pickford, Ian Clark and James Hunter are researchers at the Work, Informalisation and Place Research Centre, Nottingham Trent University.
