Press release

The new Leicester Garment and Textile Workers Trust launches with a collaboration with the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab

Today the founding Trustees of the Leicester Garment and Textile Workers Trust are delighted to announce the Trust’s formal launch. The aim of the Trust will be to address some of the immediate and future needs of workers within the local garment industry.

The Trust’s founding mission will be to create positive and lasting change f or the benefit of the wider industry – providing guidance, advocacy and remedy to anyone working in the garment industry in Leicester. The Trust has been supported by a donation of £1.1m by the boohoo group and its founding Trustees bring with them expertise from the fields of modern slavery, enforcement, local community engagement and politics.

To ensure that the Trust delivers long term positive and measurable impact, it is vital that the direction of its work is built upon a solid foundation of evidence. Therefore, the Trustees have commissioned research from experts at the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab, the largest group of modern slavery scholars in the world, and home to the world’s leading academic experts on modern slavery .

The research will provide a timely and relevant body of evidence, founded in the views of those working in the sector, that will inform the scope and the purpose of the Trust and help to identify where the Trust should focus its effort and support, directly and via grant giving.

The Rights Lab are hosting two workshops to gather insight and welcome contributions from voluntary and community, private and statutory sector stakeholders, on 25 October 2021. You can book your place

Dr. Alison Gardner, Associate Director of the Rights Lab, said: “We’re really excited to inform the work of the Leicester Garment and Textile Workers Trust and hope that many workers, businesses, and community partners will take part in this important research, to help improve the wellbeing of workers and their families, and build a city that is sustainably resilient against labour exploitation .”

The Trustees and the research team at the Rights Lab would welcome input from community leaders, charities and of course garment workers who would be willing to speak to the team to share their experience.

The Rights Lab are hosting two workshops to gather insight and welcome contributions from voluntary and community, private and statutory sector stakeholders, on 25 October 2021. You can book your place here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/preventing-labour-exploitation-in-leicesterstakeholder-scoping-workshop-tickets-179875561647

The Trust will publish the results of the research early in 2022, at which point the purpose and scope of the Trust will also be announced.

Commenting on today’s launch, Chairman of the Trust Kevin McKeever said “We look forward as a Trust to working to identify and then helping to address t he needs of workers in the Leicester garment industry. Our aim is to work with workers, industry, public and private stakeholders and those groups already active on the ground in the city, building on the robust evidence base being provided by the work of Nottingham University’s Rights Lab to improve the sector for all.”

ENDS

About Nottingham University, Rights Lab

The Rights Lab is the world’s largest and leading group of modern slavery researchers and a University of Nottingham Beacon of Excellence. Through five main research programmes, on Data, Communities, Law, Ecosystems, and Business, the Rights Lab delivers new and cutting-edge research that provides rigorous data, evidence and discoveries for the anti-slavery effort. Rights Lab team leads for stakeholder impact and engagement work across all five programmes to translate research findings for key stakeholders. The team’s INSPIRE project (Involving Survivors of Slavery in Policy & Intervention Research), run in partnership with Survivor Alliance, works across the five research programmes to ensure research is survivor-informed.