The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is a framework in the UK for identifying and supporting people who were referred to it as potential victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. After a person is referred to the NRM by a first responder (like a police officer or social worker) as a potential victim of modern slavery.
There are two stages for decision-making within the NRM: reasonable grounds (RG) and conclusive grounds (CG). The RG decision is expected to be made within 5 working days and is met when it is assessed by the Home Office that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an individual is a victim of modern slavery. People who receive a positive decision are entitled to relevant support, including access to accommodation, medical care, and legal advice.
The ‘conclusive grounds’ decision is made whether, ‘on the balance of probabilities’, there are sufficient grounds to decide that the individual is a survivor of modern slavery. Positive decision provides an official recognition that the individual is someone who experienced modern slavery and might help them continue to access some support services.
The Home Office publishes quarterly statistics of the NRM, which provide a rich data source for most comprehensively painting the picture of modern slavery and human trafficking in the UK and understanding those referrals which are and are not formally recognised as survivors of modern slavery.
A research project led by the International Organization for Migration UK (IOM UK) is analysing the NRM data to provide a richer understanding of the nature and scale of modern slavery in the UK. The IOM UK’s data scientists are using statistical methods such as descriptive statistics, tests of statistical significance or regression analysis to analyse the relevant NRM data.
The project is complementing and building on existing outputs on NRM statistics already produced by IOM UK and aiming to fill gaps in knowledge and develop a ‘deep dive’ into particular issues such as the changing patterns of referrals, decisions at national and local levels, and to explore what NRM statistics tell us about the ways in which changes in policy and legislation impact on decision making and how many people are formally recognised as survivors of modern slavery.
The topics of three separate analyses were decided together with the Modern Slavery PEC, including with its Lived Experience Advisory Panel, and linked to specific opportunities for impacting policies on modern slavery.
- The first briefing explores the different reasons for negative Conclusive Grounds (CG) decisions for people referred between 2020 and 2024, following the recent dramatic increase in negative decisions being handed in the last two years.
- The second briefing examines the numbers of negative Reasonable Grounds and Conclusive Grounds decisions which have been reconsidered and how many of those resulted in a new positive decision being awarded in the context of the dramatic increase in negative decisions and policy changes to have a negative decision reconsidered.
- The third briefing investigates which counties in the UK are potential hotspots of different forms of human trafficking by analysing NRM data on the reported locations of where exploitation occurred in the UK and examines differences in reporting and exploitation types between different geographies in the UK such as urban and rural.
Research team: Patrick Burland (IOM UK) Yerev Contreras (IOM) Stine Laursen (IOM) Yiwen Zhang (IOM UK)
