Pedal Me · A campaign running since September 2024
SLAVERY-FREE
LOGISTICS
Britain was part of leading the world to tackle slavery. It's now set up to lead the world in tackling modern slavery. The legislation is in place. The evidence is published. The question is whether the law will be enforced.
OF SURVEYED RIDERS REPORT FORCED LABOUR INDICATORS
One in five. Wage withholding. Document confiscation. Threats of violence — including against family members. Blackmail. These are not immigration statistics. They are the indicators of modern slavery, documented in peer-reviewed academic research published in 2026.
The 64% undocumented figure gets the headlines. But 64% undocumented workers is a story about platforms ignoring the law. 21% reporting forced labour indicators is a story about organised crime operating inside delivery apps — and the people trapped inside it.
SANTE-COURSE study · Bousmah et al. · IRD/Ined/Inserm/Médecins du Monde · 1,004 Uber Eats & Deliveroo riders surveyed · Paris & Bordeaux · March 2026. The 21% figure reflects the ~30% of account renters (~21% of the full sample) reporting ILO forced labour indicators including wage withholding, document confiscation, threats and blackmail. French data — see UK evidence section below.
NOT A COMPLIANCE GAP.
VIOLENT ORGANISED CRIME.
Platform food and grocery delivery runs on a structure that enables organised labour exploitation at scale. It isn't a handful of rogue actors. It is baked into the operating model.
Undocumented migrants — often arriving with smuggling debts running to thousands of pounds — rent delivery app accounts from criminal intermediaries. They pay weekly to use somebody else's verified identity. The platform sees a compliant account. The actual person delivering is unverified, unprotected, and controlled by debt and fear.
"The more I paid these men, the debt would just increase… We were really scared."
"Daniel" — trafficking survivor, forced to work for a leading UK food delivery app. iNews / Hope for Justice, 2024.Daniel's wife was stopped taking their son to school and warned: "Tell your husband not to tell anyone anything, not to open his mouth or share any information, or the worst will happen."
That is how silence is maintained. Not by paperwork failures. By threats against families.
01 — Debt Created
Migrants arrive owing thousands to smuggling networks. Repayment enforced by threats — against the worker and against family members at home.
02 — Easy Entry
Facebook and Telegram groups openly sell and rent delivery app accounts. A newcomer can start the same day with a rented login and a hired e-bike. No questions asked.
03 — Stacked Fees
Weekly account rent, bike hire, handset fees, "intro" charges — all deducted before wages. Remaining income services the smuggling debt. Earning out is nearly impossible.
04 — Control Maintained
Riders comply for fear of losing account access, defaulting on debts, or violent retaliation. A crackdown causes a short dip. Within weeks, volumes return to baseline. The system is resilient because it is profitable.
05 — Beneficiaries Walk Free
Smuggling networks recoup debts. Account landlords earn steady fees. Platforms maintain volumes while shielding liability through contractor classification. Enforcement, when it comes, hits the workers.
THIS ISN'T JUST
A HOT FOOD
DELIVERY PROBLEM.
The account-rental model operates wherever gig-mediated last-mile delivery operates. Meal kits. Grocery. Parcels. Pharmacy. Documents. Any sector where platforms subcontract delivery to nominally self-employed workers without continuous identity verification at the point of delivery.
If your business procures any kind of gig-mediated delivery, this is your supply chain question to answer — not just food platforms.
"I'm certain our supply chain is compromised. Drivers may nominally have worker status, but no one checks who is actually delivering — licence, insurance, or right to work."
Director, household-name meal kit supplier — anonymised testimony, 2025. From Pedal Me evidence dossier.An e-bike rental operator reported that after enforcement crackdowns, workers simply moved to other cities or other delivery categories — and that within six weeks, volumes were back to baseline. The labour pool is mobile. The model is flexible. It does not stay where enforcement points.
THE SAME
COMPANIES.
THE SAME
MODEL.
HERE.
The SANTE-COURSE study was conducted in France. But Deliveroo's UK operation is not a different company to its French one. Uber Eats's UK operation is not a different company to its French one. The account-rental infrastructure, the Facebook groups, the e-bike rental shops — they operate across borders.
Pedal Me is in a near-unique position to observe this directly. Our riders are on London streets, thousands of deliveries, every day. We see who is delivering for the platforms. We have spoken to riders, to platform staff, to e-bike rental operators, and to intermediaries who control workers. What we observe is consistent with what the French research documents at scale.
Citizen Science
Our own street-level observations found that at times more than 50% of UK Deliveroo deliveries were completed by someone other than the registered account holder — the same account-substitution documented at 73.5% in France, visible on London streets. pedalme.co.uk/whos-doing-the-work →
UK Case
A trafficking survivor assisted by Hope for Justice, moved to the UK and forced to work for a leading food delivery app. Traffickers pocketed his earnings. His wife was threatened to ensure his silence. This is a UK case, documented by iNews, 2024.
Oct 2024
Around thirty Brazilian riders — working for Uber Eats and Deliveroo from a makeshift encampment — spoke to journalists about their conditions. The response was a 4am Immigration Enforcement raid. 17 arrested, 13 detained for deportation. Zero action against the platforms or intermediaries controlling their accounts.
"Fathers and mothers being searched as if they were animals." — Celia Campos, rider. The Guardian, October 2024.
Admission
A major platform's Head of Insurance and Risk, in direct conversation with Pedal Me (November 2025), was asked whether debt bondage was occurring in their delivery supply chain. Their response: "Oh — we know."
May 2026
Following SANTE-COURSE, The Grocer reported on "modern slavery risk at UK supermarkets in wake of French delivery courier study" — naming the major retailers procuring last-mile fulfilment from these platforms as facing direct supply chain exposure.
THE LAW
CHANGED.
IN DECEMBER
2025.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 received Royal Assent in December 2025. It extended right-to-work verification to gig economy platform workers — explicitly framed as a modern slavery measure. The contractor-classification defence platforms have relied on for a decade is, on right-to-work, now legally inert.
As of May 2026 — five months after commencement — no enforcement campaign of the scale the Act was designed to support has been publicly reported against any of the major UK delivery platforms. That may change. Whether it already has changed, behind closed doors, is something only the platforms and the Home Office know.
Britain was part of leading the world to tackle slavery. It's now set up to lead the world in tackling modern slavery.
The legislation is in place. The evidence is published. The question is enforcement.Note: Pedal Me has run the Slavery-Free Logistics campaign since September 2024. We believe this campaign contributed to the pressure that led to these legislative changes.
BSAIA 2025
Up to £45,000 per undocumented worker — rising to £60,000 for repeat offenders. Applies irrespective of how workers are classified. The contractor defence is gone.
MSA 2015 §1
Up to life imprisonment for slavery and forced labour offences. The directing-mind doctrine extends personal liability to senior executives where awareness can be evidenced. Platforms have been told, in writing, by multiple parties. The record exists.
MSA 2015 §54
Companies with turnover above £36m must publish Modern Slavery Act statements. Home Office guidance is explicit: supplier self-assurances do not satisfy a buyer's own due-diligence obligation once that buyer has credible contrary evidence. SANTE-COURSE is credible contrary evidence. Pedal Me has written formally to the CEOs of Waitrose, Co-op, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Boots and M&S. As of May 2026, no substantive response from any of them.
the Chain
The BSAIA gives the Home Office the power to extend enforcement up the supply chain — to the household-name retailers whose orders are being fulfilled by undocumented workers via their delivery partners. We do not know whether this is already planned or already in motion.
If you are in procurement or compliance, this is your uncertainty to manage. The question is not whether the power exists — it does. The question is when it will be used, and whether your supply chain due diligence will be adequate when it is.
WE'RE NOT A
DISINTERESTED PARTY.
We have a commercial stake in this. Worth stating plainly — because we think the reasons are legitimate and we'd rather you heard them from us.
IT UNDERCUTS OUR RIDERS' WAGES
Our riders are employees. Contracts, sick pay, holiday pay, National Living Wage as a floor. The platforms' model — built on account-renting and the labour of people too frightened to complain — creates a cost structure that is unbeatable through any means that doesn't involve exploitation. That's not competition. It's a structural subsidy to modern slavery, paid for by the workers trapped inside it.
IT LIMITS WHAT WE CAN BUILD
Pedal Me exists to show that a better kind of courier company is possible. We think employed riders and proper logistics are genuinely the best way to move things around London. The amount of work we can reach, and the investment case we can make, is constrained as long as we compete against businesses that externalise their costs onto the workers they exploit. The problem doesn't stay contained. It spreads — into new sectors, new cities, new supply chains.
YOUR WAITROSE DELIVERY MIGHT BE DIFFERENT
Waitrose, Co-op, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Boots, M&S all outsource last-mile delivery to Uber Eats and Deliveroo. On the evidence, an unknown proportion of those deliveries are made by people with no right to work, controlled by criminal networks. A standard has to be maintained. Right now it isn't being met. We've told the CEOs. None has responded substantively.
We declined a partnership opportunity with Uber on these same modern-slavery grounds, at material commercial cost. The commercial and moral arguments converge: the only way an ethical employment model survives in UK logistics is if the law already on the statute book is enforced against the businesses that have built their model on ignoring it.
THE ASKS
Pedal Me has been raising these issues formally since 2024 — with retailers, ministers, and the platforms themselves. The legislative tools now exist. These are the things that need to happen.
Full evidence dossier, correspondence, and source links available on request.
Contact: Ben Knowles, CEO — ben@pedalme.co.uk
Call it modern slavery, not illegal working. Two different statutory frameworks, different penalties, different victim pathways. Treating one as the other is why the Bristol raid produced 17 victim arrests and zero platform investigations.
Enforce the BSAIA 2025 at scale. The civil penalty architecture is in place. Use it — against the platforms, at the scale the prevalence data implies.
Extend enforcement up the supply chain to retailers. The power exists under the BSAIA. Apply it to the household-name retailers procuring last-mile fulfilment from platforms whose rider networks the evidence documents. Commercial behaviour changes when buyers face the same liability as suppliers.
Pair with criminal investigations under MSA Section 1. CPS and NCA, into the platforms and named individuals. The directing-mind doctrine is relevant when platforms have been told, in writing, what is happening and have not acted.
Verify the person at the door — not the account. The narrow technical fix on which the whole model depends. Where it is done properly and continuously, account-rental cannot persist.
Include ethical operators in any consultation. Businesses that employ all their staff and verify right-to-work have a direct stake in getting this right. We should be at the table.
HOW WE
OPERATE
We're a London courier company. We use cargo bikes because they're faster in the city and better at the job. Every rider is an employee. That's not a selling point — it's just how we think a courier company should work.
We work with restaurants, offices, retailers, film productions, legal firms, and anyone who needs things moved reliably around London. If you want a supply chain you can account for, we're happy to talk.
- All riders employed on contracts — not gig workers, not contractors
- Right to work verified for every rider before they start
- Real induction and ongoing training programme
- National Living Wage as a minimum floor
- Full insurance and liability coverage
- Modern Slavery Act compliance documentation available on request
- Same-day, scheduled, and regular account work across London
MATTERS
TO YOUR
BUSINESS.
Get in touch to discuss business deliveries, account work, or Modern Slavery Act compliance documentation. Same-day or scheduled. London-wide.