What You Need to Know About Anti-Bribery Legislation (Non Member Link)

Published on 30th January 2025

What specific aspects of anti bribery laws should interior designers be aware of?

Since 2011, the Bribery Act has been in place to protect business owners and the people they work with from the consequences of bribery. However, it can be difficult as an interior designer to know the necessary procedures to protect yourself and your company from bribery and falling on the wrong side of the law. Luckily, BIID created a campaign in 2019, ‘Kick Back the Kickbacks’, to eradicate bribes from and to interior designers. Reassure yourself that you know the relevance of anti-bribery laws and how you should interpret them.

Why are anti-bribery laws relevant to interior designers?

Interior designers and design companies are just some of the professionals who could bribe others or, most commonly, receive bribes from other businesses, such as their suppliers.

What are the aims of the law?

The law aims to react to threats by making bribery an offence. This means that interior design professionals will break the law if they receive or make bribes, including to foreign officials, or if they do not stop bribes from being made in their name. It also aims to ensure professionals like interior designers take appropriate steps to stop bribery. By creating the act, the government wants to simplify legalities and ensure everyone can do business fairly.
On the other hand, although hospitality can be used as a bribe, the law does not aim to stunt businesses offering hospitality. This is especially the case when it is offered to show the business and its products in a positive light and to develop future relations.

What does the act cover?

The act deals with a few different types of bribery. These include:

Bribing someone else

The act suggests that interior designers may be prosecuted if they offer money, or another benefit, such as a holiday, to someone else in exchange for acting on their behalf and against their responsibilities, otherwise called ‘improper performance’. This could include breaching trust and being partial. It is also against the law to knowingly receive this money before acting in the bribe-maker’s favour.

Bribery of a foreign official

Foreign officials, including people with governmental, public-facing, or administrative roles outside the UK, should not be offered money or another advantage to sway their how they perform their role. These offerings count as bribes if they are intended to have a positive business outcome. Courts do not need evidence of this bribery to prosecute you. The law differs for tenders and can change due to local laws.

Failure to prevent bribery

Under the act, it is an offence for the member of an interior design company to bribe someone else in order to receive business benefits. These members include not only employees, but also agents, freelancers, and, in some cases, suppliers and contractors. You should be especially careful if you run a joint venture or are a parent company. You may not be prosecuted if you only benefit indirectly from a bribe or make a payment under duress. The law has also now changed on facilitation payments.

What are your responsibilities as an interior designer?

Although it is not possible to stop all bribery from occurring or being offered, it is vital that you, as an interior designer, can determine the appropriate measures for the size of and the amount of risk to your company. For instance, you may face less risk if you only do business within the UK. This risk might also depend on who is associated with your company. It is vital that you feel confident to report bribery to the Serious Fraud Office and other organisations.

How can you make sure you remain compliant?

There are a few different principles that you need to think about to remain compliant.

Procedures

You should create an anti-bribery policy for your interior design company. This should state your views on bribery and your anti-bribery procedures, including the development of an anti-bribery culture, whistle-blowing procedures, and employee training, among others. It will also discuss how you will battle specific risks. Any procedures should be realistic for your business. You can put these into place over time.

Management

It is important that the top leaders within your interior design business, including you as the owner, are dedicated to creating and enforcing anti-bribery procedures, as well as cultivating an anti-bribery culture. Leaders should effectively communicate procedures to staff. This includes a statement on the company’s intranet that discusses your zero-tolerance stance and the consequences of offering a bribe. Your involvement should depend on the size of your business; in smaller companies, you might develop policies, whereas, in larger organisations, you may delegate and monitor this responsibility. Your involvement might include training senior managers, speaking to external bodies, and giving feedback to a management board, among other steps.

Risk Assessment

Before you do anything else, though, you must conduct a bribery risk assessment. In most cases, this will form part of a wider risk assessment. This should be recorded and updated regularly in line with your business’s growth. This risk assessment will help you to understand any threats and develop better anti-bribery procedures. You should gather internal and external information and oversee the process yourself. This risk assessment should cover external risks, such as corruption, and internal risks, such as flagging financial controls.

Due Diligence

To ensure that no one offers bribes on your behalf, interior designers must enact due diligence procedures. These policies can be created by internal or external professionals and should match the risk your business faces. Whereas some businesses might decide that few due diligence practices are necessary, large ventures might want to carry out investigations, ask for background checks, and monitor their business connections. This includes employees, especially those who are in the right position to make bribes.

Communication

However, it is not enough to create an anti-bribery policy. This should also be understood and put into practice by staff. This can be encouraged through effective communication, which includes making policies and procedures readily available. It can also be encouraged by creating regular online or in-person training schemes for your new recruits and longest-serving staff members. This training will educate them on bribery and preventative measures. The training should also depend on their role and risk level. This will ensure bribery is constantly monitored, reviewed and quickly reported by team members. These speak-up protocols should include a confidential and secure way to receive information about potential bribes from staff and allow your team to quickly contact someone for guidance or feedback. It is also important to create external communications that reassure any company you work with. These communications include statements such as the results of recent surveys and your anti-bribery measures.

Monitoring and Review

Finally, interior designers must track and review their policies frequently, especially if there has been a big bribery news item or the government changes the law. This will enable you to keep up with the changing nature of your business and potential threats. You might be able to do this by sending out surveys and looking at other companies’ protocols, digital monitoring software, managerial reports, and even external compliance certification.

Although there are certain steps that you need to take to remain compliant, it is important to know that you can opt for alternatives that suit your venture without finding yourself facing legal proceedings.

What could happen if you break the law?

If you break the law and commit or receive a bribe, you may find yourself facing bigger court jurisdictional and sentencing powers than in the past with up to 7 to 10 years in prison. In most cases, including if you are a British resident or national, this is true whether you perform an offence within the UK or outside of it.

However, you should not panic about a sole bribery incident, especially if you have enacted the correct procedures and co-operate with any investigation. These factors can be used in your defence.
Before you are prosecuted, the court must decide whether it is in the public interest to prosecute you and whether there is enough evidence. It must be proved beyond reasonable doubt that you have committed an offence. Whether you are prosecuted will also depend on how much control you had over the bribe.

Further Information

If you require further information on anti bribery legislation, you can download ‘The Bribery Act 2010: Guidance to help commercial organisations prevent bribery’.
Disclaimer – This article has been created from Ministry of Justice guidelines so interior designers can find relevant sections. The BIID takes no responsibility for the compliance of The Bribery Act 2010 based on this document.