Latest Modern Slavery Statistics for Greater Manchester

The Modern Slavery Unit (MSU) was established in March 2015. Prior to this time the knowledge and extent of modern slavery within Greater Manchester was largely unknown. As a result, one of the focuses of the Unit is to identify what modern slavery looks like within Greater Manchester and capture some key statistics to help track how things change over time and develop our understanding of this complex and evolving issue. The aim of this section is to provide an insight to professionals and the public. Feel free to use the contact section if you have any questions or suggestions as to what is provided here.

A trend that can be clearly identified from the figures is that numbers are increasing year on year in relation to modern slavery in Greater Manchester. However care should be taken when making sense of figures and what they tell us. This does not necessarily mean that modern slavery is increasing in Greater Manchester, indeed professional judgement would suggest that it isn't. A more plausible explanation is that as we understand modern slavery more and raise awareness both professionally and within the community our detection of modern slavery will improve and so numbers of cases will increase whilst this happens.

Greater Manchester number of combined NRM and DTN figures

The NRM and DTN is the official nationally recognised system for identifying a victim of modern slavery. The figures before includes all referrals made by either the police or other first responders for victims of modern slavery in the Manchester area (excluding all referrals for exploitation outside of Manchester)

Correct to 01/01/2024

Partner Updates

We work with a range of partners across Greater Manchester to gain a better understanding of what modern slavery looks like and what the experience of victims is.  Below is some information to update you on some activity partners are doing in this area.    

Trilateral Research and University of Manchester

Trilateral Research, a leading research and technology development company, together with the eminent University of Manchester will be building Greater Manchester’s capacity to combat slavery, human trafficking and exploitation. We are calling this Honeycomb.  It will take place over three years and will:

• Develop relationships with organisations across private, public and civil society sectors
• Support organisations to effectively capture novel information related to modern slavery, human trafficking and exploitation
• Establish data sharing agreements with organisations to enable the collation of non-identifiable information that is collected Collate and analyse data to enable a more informed picture of modern slavery across Greater Manchester in order to share across governance structures and partners 
• Keep the modern slavery partnership and associated networks informed of emerging trends and themes, and be able to respond in a timely way to requests for information packages made through the partnership 
• Develop effective targeted prevention and awareness campaigns, and feed into wider anti-slavery strategy, based on the analysis of partner data, as well as effectively evaluating the impact of these campaigns

The project is funded by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority [GMCA] and is part of the city-region’s responsibility to take a robust approach to slavery and human trafficking. 

“Modern slavery and human trafficking is happening now across Greater Manchester. To prevent and tackle this scourge, we need to be able to understand how it happens. We know that not every victim or survivor will want to report their experience to the police, but there might be organisations, businesses and service providers who have important pieces of information that can help protect those people who are trapped. This information can be safely shared, without breaking a survivor’s confidentiality, to help us to understand the methods exploiters use to trap victims. This is why we are investing in this partnership with Trilateral Research and the University of Manchester, so that we can better understand the problem, enabling us to work together to prevent modern slavery from happening, safeguard victims and bring more perpetrators to justice"

Bev Hughes, Greater Manchester’s Deputy Mayor for Policing, Crime, Criminal Justice and Fire

Honeycomb will help GMCA and our partners take action on the vast amounts of data that is spread across different stakeholders, integrate disparate data sources and make the best possible use of the data while respecting best legal and ethical-practice. The project will use Trilateral’s data analysis platform – STRIAD® - their expertise in data protection, privacy, ethics and explainable AI, along with the University of Manchester’s rich research methods, ethical processes and expertise to gain a true insight into human trafficking and modern slavery. Building on these insights, Honeycomb will run a series of campaigns and help the city-region intelligently and creatively protect people from the crimes of human trafficking and modern slavery as well as interrupting traffickers’ activities. The partnership is an expansion of each partner’s long history of work in the anti-human trafficking and modern slavery sector. 

West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network - Culture Booklets

West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network have worked with communities, enforcement agencies and support organisations to develop culture guides for frontline practitioners who are working with people from Albania or Vietnam.  You can access these guides via the West Midlands Anti Slavery Network website.

Albania and Vietnam Culture booklets

Greater Manchester Modern Slavery End of Year comparisons

If you have any queries about data and intelligence on modern slavery or would like discuss data sharing feel free to contact - Christopher.Geneux@gmp.police.uk

Please note:

• These figures do not include any NRMs or DTNs which relate to exploitation outside of Greater Manchester. This would skew Greater Manchester figures and highlights an important variation than official National Statistics. If those NRMs were included the figures would be higher. Please use the contact section below if you have any questions over statistics.
• No Other Agency NRM data available prior to 2015.
• GMP = Greater Manchester Police.
• HO Crimes = Official Home Office recorded modern slavery crimes.

Latest Media on Greater Manchester

Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery / Figures

Work of Programme Challenger - November 2023

Project Launches to combat Modern Slavery - July 2021

Manchester Evening News (MEN) Article - November 2020

About Manchester Article  - October 2020