At Hay & Kilner we believe in fostering strong relationships with our suppliers based on mutual respect, integrity, and a commitment to ethical business practices.
This supplier Code of Conduct serves as a guide to the standards and expectations we have for our suppliers. We firmly believe that by adhering to these principles, we can collectively contribute to a sustainable, responsible, and ethical business environment.
Supplier commitment to us
We expect our suppliers to observe the following principles:
Diversity & inclusion
Suppliers must promote equal opportunities for all and embrace diversity in the workplace. Suppliers should have in place policies which explicitly prohibit discrimination on any ground including sex, race, religion or belief, social background, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, disability or age and procedures for any concerns to be raised.
Employment
Suppliers must adopt fair and ethical employment practices. Suppliers must take steps to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not occurring in their business or in their supply chain. Suppliers must notify us immediately if they become aware or have reason to believe that they, or any of their officers, employees, agents or sub-contractors have breached or potentially breached any of the provisions of this requirement on modern slavery. This includes, but is not limited to, forced labour, child labour or prison labour. Suppliers should ensure their employees are compensated in line with all applicable employment laws, including those relating to minimum wages, overtime hours and legally required benefits.
Health & wellbeing
Suppliers must take a proactive approach to the wellbeing of their workforce. Suppliers should have policies and procedures in place which commit to health and wellbeing in the workplace, in addition to meeting their duties as an employer and complying with relevant health and safety legislation.
Information security
Suppliers must respect and protect the confidentiality of our data and our clients’ data. Confidentiality and protection of our data is extremely important for both us and our clients. Suppliers must ensure that our information is kept in a confidential and secure manner. Suppliers must be able to demonstrate compliance with information security best practice frameworks, policies and procedures if requested and provide evidence of secure networks, IT operations, development and change activities for technology assets along with procedures for the timely identification and management of incidents.
Privacy & data protection
Suppliers must comply with all privacy and data protection laws. Suppliers must notify us without delay if they are aware of any security incident that may affect the confidentiality of our data or that of our clients including any personal data breaches.
Environment
Suppliers must run their business in an environmentally responsible manner, as well as complying with all applicable environmental laws and regulations. We expect suppliers to set targets to implement best practice procedures aimed at reducing the impact of their business on the environment and to be able to evidence efforts to achieve them.
Financial crime
Suppliers must not tolerate, permit or engage in conduct that is criminal or in breach of application laws relating to financial crime. This includes being engaged, directly or indirectly, in bribery, corruption, fraud, sanctions, money laundering, and tax evasion by the firm or its associated persons.
Intellectual Property
Suppliers must respect and protect our intellectual property rights at all times.
Antitrust
Suppliers must comply with all applicable competition laws including those relating to information sharing with competitors and price fixing.
Supply chain
Suppliers must carry out appropriate due diligence on their own suppliers and require them to adhere to standards which are like those set out in the code. On request, suppliers will provide us with details of the due diligence they undertake.
Business continuity
Suppliers must have proportionate business continuity capabilities in place. We expect relevant suppliers to have the capability to respond quickly to manage and recover safely from any disruptive events, reducing the impact on us and the service we provide to our clients.
Conflict of interest
Suppliers must take active steps to manage and disclose to us any actual or possible conflicts of interests in relation to their engagement with us.
Compliance
We reserve the right to audit all our suppliers at any point to confirm that they have in place the appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure compliance with the code.
If the supplier is carrying out functions on our behalf which are critical to the delivery of our legal services, we require relevant information held by the supplier to be available for inspection by our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
We expect suppliers to ensure that;
The code is monitored on an ongoing basis and may be updated.
In the event there is any inconsistency between the code and any contract the supplier has asked us to enter into, the terms of the code will prevail.
If there are any breaches to the code, the supplier shall report any actual or suspected breaches to us as soon as possible. The supplier can do this by contacting their point of contact at our firm or by emailing support@hay-kilner.co.uk.
The Code was last reviewed on 7 March 2024.