Tesco has retained its top spot in the Global Governance RE 100 Index, the ranking based on compliance and conformance with the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) (2015) and good practice in human rights of London’s largest commercial landlords by square foot.

John Lewis Partnership Trust rose 11 places to second, a position it shared with the National Grid. Fourth place was held by Barclays, and fifth by HSBC.

Together, the companies making up the index own 273 million square foot (25,352 square km) in London. The index is compiled from an analysis undertaken of the statements the organisations have filed pursuant to the MSA requirements.

As a group, the 2019 Global Governance RE 100’s average combined score was 39 per cent, and in comparison, the cohort’s average combined score in the 2018 Index was 22.6 per cent. Whilst evidently performing better as a whole, the RE 100’s average combined score is 9 per cent lower than the 2019 Global Governance FTSE 100’s average combined score of 48 per cent.

Dr Shamir Ghumra, BREEAM Director at BRE, which has developed the Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard (ELS) BES 6002 that supports companies to understand the profile of their social and ethical governance, including their human rights challenges, said: “The 2019 Global Governance RE 100 Index reveals how the nation’s largest listed companies are beginning to raise their reported performance level year-on-year. However, it’s concerning that more than one-quarter of those legally required to report on their human rights policies and practices in their global supply chains have not yet done so in 2019 and did not do so in 2018.”

The Global Governance RE 100 Index and stand-alone Global Governance FTSE 100 Index are facilitated by Sustain Worldwide and are funded through the Global Governance Research Fund (GGRF). The indexes, with analysis undertaken by Development International, are publicly available as an open data resource along with the summary ‘scorecards’ and ‘marked up’ modern slavery statements of the individual organisations analysed.

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