This recent update covers the following:

• The changes in England following the announcement from the UK Government of the Covid-19 Winter Plan, confirming the lifting of the national restrictions in England on 2nd December and the re-implementation of a three tiered approach until the end of March 2021
• The status of play in Northern Ireland
• The update and restructure of the UKU Covid-19 Guidance
• A NEW useful Covid-19 Reminder infographic that you can share with your club

Earlier this year we announced that we would be setting up a UKU Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee.  We are now inviting applications to join this group.  Please see provisional terms of reference for the committee here, and a simple application form here.  

In the meantime

• We have signed UK Ultimate up with The Sporting Equals Charter which includes access to some advice and resources.
• As part of the UK & Ireland Black Lives Matter fundraiser, we were asked if teams could donate to UKU to support improvement of diversity in Ultimate in this country.  This donations fund has been running since then to provide the DEI committee with a £2k budget for some initial projects. 

We will be publishing a more substantial update next week as we are currently expecting some more information via Sport England about the latest changes to restrictions in England, effective Wed 2nd December.  Provisionally we are expecting to adopt the following approach, at least initially:

• England Tier 1: phase D
• England Tier 2: phase C
• England Tier 3: phase B

Indoor Ultimate will be extremely limited everywhere and, sadly, we do not expect any UKU Indoor championships to take place this winter.

Our Reset the Stall campaign finished a few weeks ago, but we have a few more thank-yous, and today we are delighted to announce that Fit4Ultimate has joined our line-up of new corporate partners.  

David & Carol at Fit4Ultimate are sports coaches with a passion for training and performance. Working with a wide variety of ultimate athletes, they provide results based strength & conditioning training with the overall goals of improving performance, reducing risk of injury and staying injury free...as well as making S&C training fun.  They have previously coached Iceni Ultimate, Fire of London and the Women's GB team.  

Thank you Fit4Ultimate!

The extension to the furlough scheme announced at the start of the month presented a number of different options to UK Ultimate in terms of managing the staffing time available to us. We have been operating with the majority of our staff on full time furlough since the start of April (see more info here). However, the November extension of the furlough scheme has allowed us to make some changes to the way we are operating. 

We recently announced the GB Futures Programme. The announcement outlines our plans for U24, U20 and U17 squads: building a regional talent pathway structure for competitive ultimate training for these age-groups on the assumption that their

We recently announced the GB Futures Programme. The announcement outlines our plans for U24, U20 and U17 squads: building a regional talent pathway structure for competitive ultimate training for these age-groups on the assumption that their events are quite likely to be cancelled, whilst leaving us in the best position to compete if they go ahead.   

We're currently looking to gauge interest from players and from those who may wish to fill the coach and coordinator roles at the regional hubs. If that sounds like something you could be interested in, then please read the full announcement and if you know someone who might be interested (again as either a player, coach or coordinator) please share it with them as well! 

In the last few weeks WFDF and EUF have made a number of announcements about plans for international events in 2021:

• WFDF announcement re WUGC, WU24 and WBUC
• EUF announcements U20 and U17

We welcome announcements about potential international ultimate in 2021, but the view of the UK Ultimate board is that we should prioritise planning for the significant possibility that at least some of those events may not go ahead.  

This announcement outlines our plans for U24, U20 and U17 squads: building a regional talent pathway structure for competitive ultimate training for these age-groups on the assumption that their events are quite likely to be cancelled, whilst leaving us in the best position to compete if they go ahead.   

Whilst we understand that WFDF and EUF are just announcing plans to go ahead with the events if possible, we have seen that many players tend to interpret such announcements as meaning that the events will definitely go ahead.  One reason for making this announcement now is to try to set realistic expectations about what might be possible in 2021.