Student Trip, Travel and Fieldwork Safety

The Deputy Vice Chancellor and Directors of School are ultimately responsible, and through appropriately qualified staff members, are responsible for ensuring that adequate health, safety and wellbeing arrangements are in place for each study visit and that checks are undertaken well in advance of any study visit taking place.

The Directors of School and Deputy Vice Chancellor have responsibility for approving all overseas trips. The Chief Operating Officer and Pro Vice Chancellor may approve trips in the absence of the DVC.

Directors of School and Programme Directors have responsibility for authorising all UK trips

The Director of School must ensure that those appointed to organise trips and fieldwork activities are authorised, adequately trained and competent to do so. The Director of School must also ensure that procedures are in place to review the safety of study trip activities, considering the experiences of previous work.

The Study Visit Leader is responsible for carrying out the risk assessment and implementing the control measures, which MUST be agreed and signed off by the Programme Director and Director of School for UK study visits and by the Director of School and Deputy Vice Chancellor (or deputise) for international study visits as appropriate.

• Yes this isn’t a problem, we obviously cant force people to join a group but we can create for others to join.
• The only stipulation is that on completion of the trip the group must be deleted so we don’t retain users phone numbers and information

The H&S team have pre-written low and medium travel and fieldwork risk assessments, this is to help reduce your work load as wells improve overall quality. The expectation is that you review the controls mentioned in the risk assessments and where needed implement them and sign to say you have done this. This should be shared with supporting staff and students, if you are doing anything extra they we have mentioned then this should also be added to the risk assessment.

Student data relating to emergency contact details, disability, health and support needs is collected online via myRecords. As this data is collected during enrolment, the Study Visit Leader must remind students to update their records via myUCA prior to the visit. Staff can view ‘Student Submitted Study Trip Details’ by accessing the ‘Academic Reports’ tab of myRecords via myUCA. Data can be retrieved from myRecords either by ‘student’ or ‘course’.

Personal student information received both prior to and whilst on the study trip, particularly contact information and risk assessments which may contain personal and sensitive information about  edical/disabilities/gender related to individual students must be held in a securely ensuring personal and sensitive data is not shared or disclosed.

Where students declare any medical conditions and/or medication, this should be considered as part of the ‘Study Visit Risk Assessment’, and in particular used to determine the appropriate support, first aid and emergency arrangements.

The student declaration form has a space for a 24/7 emergency contact number, this is someone who is responsible for the trip and can be contacted if there is a major issue whilst the trip is happening. This should be the Director of Schools, if the Director of Schools is on the trip with the students then it will be the Head of Campus.

Leadership Team Emergency Contact number is a designated phone number (01252 918432) that has been allocated for the purposed of Leadership Team in a emergency.

Low Risk

The Generic Travel Risk Assessment is intended to apply where there is minimal hazard to the health and safety of individuals and exposure only to low-level background risks that are broadly comparable to normal day-to-day life risks encountered within safe areas of the UK and internationally. This will typically apply to:

Travel to low risk destinations within the UK

Travel to destinations beyond the UK where there is no Government FCDO warning against travel in place, and no foreseeable additional significant risks.

The form is designed as a stand-alone risk assessment and no user additions are normally needed, although there is provision for users to add content where this is considered desirable or informative as a record of the risks considered. Such additions can be made, provided the overall risk remains low.

High Risk

Where travel involves additional significant risks beyond the low level risks anticipated by the Generic Travel Risk Assessment such as travel to more hazardous destinations, or methods and modes of transport that may pose higher risks, completion of a Trip-specific Risk Assessment is required. This is a more comprehensive process and will normally apply to:

Higher risk travel within the UK

• Travel to destinations outside the UK where there is a Government FCDO travel warning in place. This includes FCDO warnings either against 'all travel', or against 'all but essential travel'.
• Overseas travel where there are significant additional risks, beyond those covered within the Generic Travel Assessment. for example sudden civil unrest or security issues, weather events etc.

The form requires basic trip details, completion of a formal written risk assessment and evaluation of the overall risk level and provides for written authorisation by higher levels of management.

The aim of this is to make sure that safe working arrangements are in place for all University staff and student activities conducted beyond the campus environment.

Fieldwork includes larger scale activities such as archaeological digs, student fieldtrips and research fieldtrips as well as smaller scale work such as interviews, survey and sample collection activities carried out by staff and students in many disciplines.

Virtually all fieldwork will involve travel away from the University campus, either locally, or overseas and the University's Student trip Policy will apply.

The relationship between travel and fieldwork

Generally fieldwork will involve some practical on-site activity in addition to the travel element and the way in which risks can best be assessed must be considered. It is for those arranging and managing such trips to ensure that the level of risk assessment undertaken is appropriate to the activity. Flexibility is possible in deciding which combination of forms is most suitable for the overall activity planned, provided that they result in a suitable risk assessment.

Typically, attendance at conferences and meetings and similar activities, where risks are minimal, will require only that the University's travel procedures be followed. Such trips can normally be conducuted under the University Travel Risk Assessment protocols and will not normally require any additional fieldwork risk assessment.

If the risks from the fieldwork are relatively simple and can be adequately addressed within a Trip-specific Travel Risk Assessment, (where that is required) it is permissible to incorporate basic fieldwork activity risks within that assessment with no additional fieldwork assessment required.

In other situations where the nature of the field activity is more complex (e.g. student field trips) or involves more significant risks, completion of a separate Fieldwork Risk Assessment in addition to the travel protocols will normally be appropriate. If a Trip-specific Travel Risk Assessment and Fieldwork Risk Assessment are being done, it is acceptable for these to cross-reference one another to minimise repetition.

Where a fieldwork specific risk assessment is judged necessary, the forms below may be used to record this. The Fieldwork Risk Assessment template should provide a useful outline for many types of field activity and should be considered the normal starting point.  However, the range of off-campus activity across the University is very wide and it is recognised that this content and layout may not be appropriate for every activity. Where the Fieldwork Risk Assessment template is not a good fit the template may be amended or the General Risk Assessment, available from our Forms page can be used. This provides a fully flexible alternative that can be tailored to the circumstances of any activity.

A single fieldwork assessment can cover a range of activities, or activities over a period of time provided all relevant risks for each occurence are able to be fully addressed. Where that is not the case, separate assessments for individual activities or occurences may be more appropriate.

The University Liability insurance covers Legal Liability for bodily injury and loss or damage to material property including educational visits within the U.K. and overseas.

If a Campus or Department is unsure of the adequacy of insurance arrangements for fieldwork activities, the matter must be referred to the University insurers via insurance@uca.ac.uk .

Travel insurance documents and guidance can be found on Teams via University Documents. 

Up to date information is also available on the UMAL Travel Hub umal.co.uk/travel-hub

Study Visit Leaders are responsible for ensuring the insurance is adequate and informing trip participants if it is necessary for them to obtain additional personal insurance, for example for travel.