Overseas Travel and Fieldwork

Staff and students often travel overseas on university business. Heads of department maintain a responsibility for the health and safety of their staff and students when they travel overseas for university business. The Overseas Travel and Fieldwork policy statements below set out the arrangements for the safe management of overseas travel, including:

• risks involved in overseas work
• risk assessment
• FCO Travel Advice
• insurance
• contingency planning
• health matters

The University has a standard template for travel and fieldwork risk assessment (see below). This incorporates basic COVID considerations.

Departments are required to use the standard template for overseas travel.  However, the template can be tailored to individual departmental risk profiles.  This includes a local decision on whether Section 1 of the template is uploaded to the University's Travel Insurance Application and Travel Registration System (TIRS) where the travel is assessed as low risk.

For example, it may be unnecessary to upload Section 1 of the template onto TIRS where staff travel is low risk and elements of Section 1 are managed appropriately and proportionately via other means. 

Further advice can be obtained from the Safety Office.