Liverpool lawyers to assist in boohoo shake-up
In 2020 it was claimed a factory supplying online fashion retailer boohoo was paying workers just £3.50 an hour. Now a team of Liverpool lawyers will oversee a review by the company. Tony McDonough reports
A team of Liverpool-based lawyers are to help provide independent oversight of a shake-up of the supply chain and business practices of online fashion retail Boohoo.
Boohoo, which generates annual revenues of more than £1.2bn, was last year embroiled in controversy when a report in the Sunday Times claimed workers at a factory in Leicester run by one of its suppliers was paying workers as little as £3.50 and hour.
This prompted the company to launch its Agenda for Change programme, focusing on its supply chain and its business practices. And it appointed Sir Brian Leveson, best known for leading the inquiry into the press phone-hacking scandal, to provide independent oversight of the process.
Now a team of barristers from Exchange Chambers in Liverpool have been appointed to assist him in his task. The Exchange team is headed by Louis Browne QC and includes Chris Tehrani QC, Steven Fennell, Alfie Weiss, David Temkin and Nicola Daley.
Louis Browne who was called to the Bar in 1988 and took silk in 2017, is a recognised leader in the field of Inquiries. He is currently instructed in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and was instructed at the Manchester Arena Inquiry.
Other members of the Exchange Chambers team have expertise across wide-ranging areas of law and are recognised as leaders in their field.
In line with boohoo’s ongoing commitment to transparency, Sir Brian Leveson’s first report was published last week. The report acknowledged the pace with which boohoo is effecting change, concluding that the company “has enthusiastically started the journey and is travelling along the right road”.
Boohoo was founded in Manchester more than a decade ago by entrepreneur Mahmud Kamani and designer Carol Kane. Rather than supply high street stores they decided to set up their online retailer selling fashionable and cut-price clothes direct to the public.