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Leicester’s garment district, which is home to more than 1,000 factories, has received fewer than 60 health and safety inspections and only 28 fire inspections since October 2017 despite long-standing concerns about working conditions.
The city’s small clothing manufacturers, which employ up to 10,000 people, were also the subject of just 36 HMRC investigations into the payment of the national minimum wage between 2017 and March 2020, according to a freedom of information request submitted by The Guardian. .
Not only is the inspection rate low. HMRC has issued sanctions to fewer than 10 textile companies that failed to pay minimum wage since 2017 and claimed just over £ 100,000 in arrears relative to 143 workers.
The figures highlight the low rate of regulatory oversight of factories in Leicester despite the creation of a multi-agency group in October 2017 to try to address their problems.
The group was established after a 2015 report by the Ethical Trading Initiative, comprised of retailers, unions, and lobbyists, illegally flagged for low pay and poor conditions.
Leicester East Labor MP Claudia Webbe said the figures were “absolutely shocking and devastating.”
“I think it is shameful that successive governments have neglected to act despite long-standing evidence of misconduct by employers in Leicester’s garment industry,” he said.
She blamed austerity budget cuts on regulators, local authorities and the fire service over the past decade, which she said reduced her ability to monitor workplace conditions.
Some buildings, including the former imperial typewriter factory, which houses up to 40 small factories, have only been inspected once.
There have been nine garment factory fire calls in LE5’s main textile district since 2017, including a major fire that prompted the evacuation of nearby facilities in 2018. Other major garment factory fires have been recorded in districts close.
Of 58 inspections that the Health and Safety Executive has carried out since October 2017, 27 have been carried out since April 1 of this year, when the coronavirus pandemic renewed attention in the Leicester garment industry. The HSE has not brought any cases against textile companies in the country as a whole since 2017.
Conservative MP for Northwest Leicestershire, Andrew Bridgen, raised the issues at Leicester’s garment factories in Parliament in January, calling conditions a national disgrace and describing the area as “the Wild West.” “If you remove regulatory oversight and police from everything, organized crime is going to come in,” he said.
There are only four front-line HSE inspectors in Leicester and three apprentices, although the team had managed to visit 45 textile and clothing companies since March.
Bridgen said: “We need a body that has the power to investigate labor abuses and the authority to use other agencies like HMRC. They’ve all been working in silos. “
The government completed a consultation on the creation of a single labor market enforcement body in October last year, but has yet to act.
A spokesperson said: “We are committed to establishing a single labor rights enforcement body to provide a clearer route for workers to file a complaint and obtain support, while providing a consistent approach to enforcement.”
HSE said it was “committed to working in partnership with other law enforcement agencies, both strategically and at the operational level to share intelligence when needed and take action to improve the working lives of those who work in the textile and other industries. ”. He said there was “nothing to indicate major health and safety issues” after inspections in 2018, 2019 and early 2020.
HMRC said: “We will continue to target employers who break the rules, ensuring that workers receive the wages to which they are legally entitled.” She said workers could report abuse of the national minimum wage system online.
A spokesman for the Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service said the inspections were carried out as part of its risk-based program, but that it had suspended the program after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London “to fully focus in the residential skyscrapers of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ”.
He said this “had an impact on the number of inspections we completed at other facilities, such as factories.”
The workers’ rights group Labor Behind the Label said the low inspection rate in Leicester highlighted “a cavalier and hands-off approach to labor market enforcement” under the current and former governments.
A spokesperson for the group, Dominique Muller, said: “This has resulted in a situation where workers are exploited every day, where levels of wage theft run into the millions every week and where brands can continue to put pressure on suppliers. about prices over and over again. “
