Modern slavery and human trafficking in the UK is “far more prevalent than previously thought,” the National Crime Agency has said. 

The Government agency said there were more than 300 live policing operations currently, with cases affecting “every large town and city in the country.” The NCA said previous estimates there were 10,000-13,000 victims in the UK were the “tip of the iceberg,” with visible injuries one of the tell-tale signs to look out for when identifying slave labour. NCA vulnerabilities director Will Kerr said he had been shocked with what he had seen during this year’s intensive efforts to break up gangs, with almost every major operation triggering even more investigations. “The more that we look for modern slavery the more we find the evidence of the widespread abuse of vulnerable [people],” he said. “The growing body of evidence we are collecting points to the scale being far larger than anyone had previously thought. The intelligence we are gaining is showing that there are likely to be far more victims out there, and the numbers of victims in the UK has been underestimated.” He said that trafficking into modern slavery was now so widespread that ordinary people would be unwittingly coming into contact with victims every day.

NCA warned that the key sectors for slavery now included food processing, fishing, agriculture, construction, domestic and care workers and car washes. It added that signs of abuse included anything that suggested someone was being controlled or coerced into work – such as the manner of their dress, visible signs of injuries, signs of stress and the manner in which they had come to work in a particular area.