Modern slavery statement
For the financial year 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025
About us
Our vision is safe, effective and kind nursing and midwifery practice that improves everyone’s health and wellbeing. As the independent regulator of more than 808,000 nurses and midwives in the UK and nursing associates in England, we have an important role to play in making this vision a reality.
We’re here to protect the public by upholding high professional nursing and midwifery standards, which the public has a right to expect. That’s why we’re improving the way we regulate, enhancing our support for colleagues, professionals and the public, and working with our partners to influence the future of health and social care.
Our core role is to regulate. We set and promote high education and professional standards for nurses and midwives across the UK, and nursing associates in England and quality assure their education programmes. We maintain the integrity of the register of those eligible to practise. And we investigate concerns about professionals – something that affects very few people on our register every year.
To regulate well, we support nursing and midwifery professionals and the public. We create resources and guidance that are useful throughout professionals’ careers, helping them to deliver our standards in practice and address challenges they face. We work collaboratively so everyone feels engaged and empowered to shape our work.
We work with our partners to address common concerns, share our data, insight and learning, to influence and inform decision-making and help drive improvement in health and social care for people and communities.
Our values
Our values are important to us. They guide the way we behave, individually and together, and give us a firm foundation to promote excellence in nursing and midwifery for the benefit of the public.
We've aligned these to our strategic aims.
Each value is crucial, but their real strength comes from how they work together.
We’re fair
We treat everyone fairly. Fairness is at the heart of our role as a trusted, transparent regulator and employer.
We’re kind
We act with kindness and in a way that values people, their insights, situations and experiences.
We’re ambitious
We take pride in our work. We’re open to new ways of working and always aim to do our best for the professionals on our register, the public we serve and each other.
We’re collaborative
We value our relationships (both within and outside of the NMC) and recognise that we’re at our best when we work well with others.
Our supply chains
In order to run our organisation and deliver our objectives, we engage a number of external suppliers. Every year we spend around £35m with suppliers on a range of goods, works and services that includes: hosting services for our IT systems and data, software licensing and support, office cleaning, and legal support with case preparation, among many others.
Our position on modern slavery
We believe modern slavery has no place in society and we are committed to ensuring that there are no modern slavery offences occurring in our supply chain.
We require our suppliers to comply with all law and regulation and expect them to maintain the highest ethical standards in all areas of their business operations.
If we discover one of our suppliers is allowing modern slavery offences in either their own business or their wider supply chain, we will terminate their contract and notify the relevant authorities.
Our due diligence processes, including training
We aim to buy most of our services through open competitive procurement or well-established public sector framework agreements. The suppliers on framework agreements have been subject to rigorous due diligence by organisations such as Crown Commercial Services.
Under the UK's Procurement Act 2023, suppliers must disclose certain offences to be registered on a central digital platform to participate in public procurements. This platform, also known as Find a Tender central digital platform, aims to enhance transparency and includes disclosing any exclusion grounds, such as convictions for serious offenses.
We undertake due diligence of new suppliers as part of our tendering and supplier on-boarding process. This includes, but is not limited to, an assessment of the risk of modern slavery offences and explicit inclusion of Modern Slavery within our Tenderer Warranties document.
We continuously raise awareness of modern slavery with NMC colleagues by promoting our modern slavery statement and supporting policies. Colleagues are encouraged to complete the frequently updated modern slavery e-learning module.
Our colleagues know that if they have any concerns, they can raise them, and we have a whistleblowing policy and systems in place to support this. Our managers are trained on how to handle concerns that are raised with them.
Risk areas
Due to the nature of our business and the services we require, we believe in most cases, risk of modern slavery or human trafficking occurring within our supply chains is generally low. There are however services such as catering and cleaning that are considered high risk.
The Procurement Act 2023, which applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, implemented in February 2025, strengthens measures to tackle modern slavery in public sector supply chains by expanding mandatory exclusion grounds for suppliers involved in such practices.
Under schedule 6 of the Act – mandatory exclusion grounds can apply to a supplier, or a connected person that has been convicted of an offence.
If a supplier is placed on the new public centralised debarment list because of a mandatory exclusion ground, the supplier will be barred from bidding or being awarded a public contract in any competitive tender procedure or by way of direct award.
As part of our due diligence on all our covered procurements, we will be monitoring the central debarment list on GOV.UK and reviewing exclusion grounds for suppliers as part of our conditions of participation stage.
Measuring effectiveness
In the past year we have had no reported instances of any offences as defined by the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
This statement was approved by our Executive Board on 16 September 2025.
Paul Rees
Chief Executive and Registrar
16 September 2025
Downloads
2023-2024 modern slavery statement
2022-2023 modern slavery statement
2021-2022 modern slavery statement
2020-2021 modern slavery statement
2019-2020 modern slavery statement
