Modern slavery statement

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 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.

We undertake due diligence of new suppliers as part of our supplier on-boarding process. This includes assessment of the risk of modern slavery offences.

We have raised awareness of modern slavery with NMC colleagues by promoting our modern slavery statement and supporting policies. Colleagues are provided with training and we have very recently updated our modern slavery e-learning module which everyone is encouraged to complete

We have put in place guidance for our contract managers that includes a review of modern slavery as part of their regular contract auditing activities.

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 the risk of modern slavery or human trafficking occurring within our supply chains is generally low.

We have a contract for business travel, part of which our main supplier organises hotels for NMC to use. In 2023-2024, we undertook a modern slavery survey of the top 10 hotels we use (by volume of bookings). We received eight responses, that have all been assessed as low risk. We have confirmed through research that the two hotels who didn’t respond have modern slavery statements published.

In 2023-2024 our procurement team participated in modern slavery training delivered by Unseen who are a leading UK charity specialising in modern slavery.

Also in 2023-2024 we undertook a comprehensive review of our modern slavery e-learning course. This refreshed version has been uploaded to our e-learning system and is available for all NMC staff to complete.

In the year ahead we will be focusing on implementation of the Procurement Act 2023, and we will ensure modern slavery requirements are encompassed within our new procurement processes.