A Leicestershire entrepreneur has come up with a technology which helps cut sweatshops out of the supply chain to Britain’s high street shops.

Peter Needle’s clever software is paving the way for ethical working conditions by helping the big brands keep an eye on every link in their supply chain.

Some stores have been accused failing to do enough to stop clothes being made for them under sweatshop conditions.

Allegations of Leicester factories paying half the minimum wage or ignoring social distancing precautions during lockdown have surfaced in recent weeks.

A small number have been accused of bad practice by campaign groups and newspaper investigations – and of playing a role in the city’s high localised Covid-19 rates.

Official reports, however, suggest there is little or no evidence of factory working conditions contributing to the local lockdown.

Mr Needle’s company, Segura, runs a platform that limits the risk of suppliers taking short-cuts or sub-contracting to smaller unregistered factories that could be paying workers cash in hand way below the living wage.

He set up the company – a past winner at the Leicester Mercury Business Awards – after he spotted issues in the clothes label supply chain.

His company is based in Loughborough, with a team of 10 and sales of £500,000 a year which are set to grow to £1 million by the end of 2020.

It currently has eight brands on board including Ted Baker, Debenhams, Reiss and Whistles, with others joining.

Mr Needle, who worked as a consultant in the sector before setting up the business, said exploitation within the textiles industry at home and overseas was a “big problem” that had been around for years.

He said that with the rise of fast fashion leading to quick turnarounds and lower and lower margins there was even more temptation for factory bosses to take risks with workers’ rights.

His system allows big brands to input all their supplier data, and for the suppliers to add information about the companies they source from or work with.

It covers about 70 countries and has details for 8,500 factories which Mr Needle said should double by the end of the year.

He said: “Retailers do not want to be in a position where they are caught out by dodgy stuff going on in a factory leaving them with reputational issues.

“So I had the idea of developing a global platform that a retailer could use to monitor all the orders made up and down the supply chain.

“It took three years to build the platform and Debenhams were the first to buy it, with others following.

“It means that if a garment manufacturer wants to order something from somewhere that they shouldn’t, they can’t do it through the platform, so it won’t be authorised.”

He said the problems that had been raised in Leicester were due to various factors.

He said: “Factories that certain brands thought they were buying from were not the actual factory the garments or components were being made in.

“If you want a really sustainable supply chain we are currently the only platform in the world that can do that.

“We are going into fairly rapid growth due to the awareness of the issues.

“Consumers are also more aware while investors are putting more and more pressure on brands to work harder to be more sustainable.”

He said the platform was so good at monitoring complex supply chains that they are looking at extending it to other sectors such as automotive and food.

He said: “It’s not limited to the fashion industry – most industries have blind spots in their supply chains.”