Policies
These reports include the results from the work undertaken as part of the operation of Wightlink Limited ferry services between Lymington and Yarmouth.
9th report for Lymington to Yarmouth ferries – December 2015
Lymington to Yarmouth Ferries – Case summary – December 2015
Monitoring Report 23 & 7th Report for Environmental Management Panel – December 2014 (pdf - 7.26 MB)
This statement sets out our position with regard to all potential modern slavery risks related to our business and to implement the necessary actions and safeguards that are aimed at ensuring there is no slavery or human trafficking within the business or supply chains.
We are committed to preventing such slavery and human trafficking within our business and our supply chain, along with continually improving our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking.
We are a provider of ferry transportation services between the mainland of the United Kingdom and the Isle of Wight. Wightlink Limited is owned by Arca Shipping Limited. We have over 400 employees.
We operate solely in the south of England.
We have a global annual turnover of £68 million.
Our supply chains consist mainly of engineering product and service providers in relation to our fleet of vessels used in providing our ferry transport services.
We also utilise various providers in our supply chain to provide retail products and services for both the retail outlets onboard our vessels and within our 6 terminals.
We are committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Anti-slavery Policy reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains.
As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk we conduct due diligence on our supply chain routinely.
We use a limited number of engineering contractors, as mentioned above. Prior to allowing them to work with us we ensure the contractors provide a method statement and risk assessment prior. We also ensure that these contractors are closely monitored in the provision of their services by our own staff.
In relation to the retail outlets onboard our vessels and, in our terminals, these are franchises of well-known brands that are subject to regular audits to maintain their standards. We also ensure that they are monitored in line with all relevant contractual obligations.
In general, we have in place systems to:
We have zero tolerance to slavery and human trafficking. To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our values we have in place a rigorous supply chain compliance programme.
We have a dedicated compliance team, which consists of involvement from the following departments:
To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide training to our staff.
In line with our responsibilities to raise awareness of slavery and human trafficking within our supply chain, Wightlink has instigated an audit of all supplier contracts in place to ensure that all parties within our supply chain adhere to the same values and safeguards that we do, as a minimum.
We also seek assurances from our supply chain that all workers are subject to fair terms and conditions of employment as well as policies which support fair and equitable treatment.
Our project includes activities which fall within the Solent and Southampton Water Special Protection Area (SPA) and Solent and Southampton Water Ramsar Site, which are designated as protected sites under the EU Habitats Directive. The Habitats Regulations 2010 implement the Habitats Directive into UK Law. Under the Habitats Regulations, both local planning authorities, the Marine Management Organisation and the Environment Agency are “competent authorities” and were required to assess the potential effects of the project on the integrity of the protected sites and complete an “Appropriate Assessment” prior to granting the consents necessary for the project for which they were responsible. Having taken advice from Natural England, all the competent authorities concluded that our project would not have an adverse effect on the protected European Sites.
Wightlink, as Harbour Authority at Fishbourne, is also a competent authority for the purposes of the habitats regulations, and the following confirmation that the local authorities, the Marine Management Organisation and the Environment Agency had granted the consents necessary for the project to proceed, we were required to carry out our own appropriate assessment of the project before deciding to implement it. Our appropriate assessments were carried out at an extraordinary meeting of the Board of Directors of Wightlink Limited held on 21 April 2016. The Board also concluded that the project would not have an adverse effect either alone or in combination with other projects on the European Protected Sites ie the SPA and the Ramsar Site. Further to that finding in relation to the appropriate assessment, the Board of Wightlink have decided to implement the project. We expect the port improvement works to be completed by Summer 2017 and our proposed new ‘G’ Class Ferry will arrive in Spring 2018 and will be operational shortly thereafter.
The Board of Directors of Wightlink agreed that the minutes of the Extraordinary Board Meeting would be published on our website and these can be found by following the link below:
2021
During recent years we have expanded our development focus to encourage all of our colleagues to achieve their potential in line with their skills, qualifications and experience.
On board our Ferries and in our Shore based Teams we continue to support the appointment of our female colleagues into the range of leadership roles across Wightlink.
We will continuously focus on addressing our Gender Pay Gap across our organisation
2019
We support the appointment of our female colleagues both on board our vessels and in shore based occupations into visible leadership roles in line with their skills, qualifications and experience underpinned by strong development opportunities.
Although the seafaring industry has traditionally been male dominated, we are proud to employ a continually increasing number of female Captains, Chief Officers and shore based Managers providing strong work life balance opportunities on the Solent.
Whilst always appointing the best people for our varied roles, regardless of gender, we continuously review how to address our gender pay gap.