Further to today's Government announcements we confirm that, effective Sunday 20th Dec, areas of England in Tier 4 plus all of Wales move back to Phase A restrictions.  

Our Medical Adviser, Dr Kenny Duffy has kindly produced this document for members and coaches to consider in respect of players who have had Covid-19.  Dr Kenny Duffy first started working with us as a physio at events a few years ago, and is a regular member of our GB medical support team.  We’re delighted and grateful that now he’s helping us in between events with documents such as this and the concussion information and guidance released earlier this year.  Thanks again Kenny.

We are now recruiting for national team manager and coach positions across the following GB squads:

• Lead Coach, Team Manager and Assistant Coach for the GBJ teams: U17W, U17O, U20W, U20O.

• U24 Manager (across all three teams), Squad Coach/Manager for each of the three U24 teams: Mixed, Open and Women.

The deadline for all applications is Sunday 20th December, and we will be aiming to finalise appointments by early January. For more information, including application forms, please see our full annoucement here.

England Tier 3

We have reviewed the approach taken by other outdoor team sports, the finalised government regulations for sport, and had some further discussions about our current Return-to-Play guidance.  As implied in our previous announcement we are updating our guidance so that clubs in England Tier 3 areas are now permitted to play under the Phase C guidance.

• PHASE D can be played in TIER 1
• PHASE C can be played in TIER 2
• PHASE C can be played in TIER 3

Northern Ireland

As of 11th December, some resumption of organised sport is permitted in Northern Ireland, and so we are moving back to Phase C guidance for outdoor play only, effective today.  Clubs are required to do an updated and new risk assessment for their activities.  

• PHASE C can be played in Northern Ireland

We're pleased to announce that on December 12th, 16:00 - 18:00, we'll hosting our AGM.

Once again we'll be running it online using Zoom to try and make it accessible to as many people as possible. The event is open to all UKU members and is free to attend. Please register for the event using this link : https://bit.ly/UKU_AGM_2020

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.