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 DS Risk Warning: Weather AND Mass asymptomatic testing: schools and colleges

Hoping you've had a good festive break. Sorry to be making contact now, but it is necessitated by a Met Office Weather warning and the government's testing programme. We note special schools will be the next focus and then primaries for the testing roll out.


Yellow warning of snow affecting South West England


We don't usually send out our email warnings unless an Amber or Red is issued. However, we make an exception for snow as it can pose additional challenges to normal operations.


The headline is:


Snow arriving from the north between 18:00 (UTC) on Wed 30 Dec 2020 and 14:00 (UTC) on Thu 31 Dec 2020.


Area projected to be impacted:


South West England: Gloucestershire, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, Wiltshire. Although the supporting map includes all of our operational area. It can be found here:


https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-warnings#?date=2020-12-30


Further details


Showers are likely to merge into an area of rain, sleet and snow which is expected to move south across parts of eastern Scotland, northern and western England, and perhaps the far east of Wales overnight Wednesday, and through Thursday morning. Not all locations within this area will see snow, and indeed where it does snow it will not be snowing through the entire warning period. Accumulations of 1-3 cm are most likely, with larger accumulations (most likely 5-10 cm) confined to ground above 200 metres. Snow at low levels will quickly turn to rain across Scotland during early Thursday, becoming confined to ground above 500 metres. It will also steadily turn to rain at lower levels further south through the rest of the day whilst petering out.


Mass asymptomatic testing: schools and colleges

Secondary sector should have all received the resources we accessed here:


Mass asymptomatic testing: schools and colleges

Page summary: Find out how to administer testing which will begin in January 2021.


Change made: Added an updated version of the ‘Testing handbook’ which was previously published on another webpage.


Time updated: 2:58pm, 23 December 2020


Links are included to the other resources that are available and mentioned.



There is a lot of content and things to do in practice which will take some getting heads around. The target being set, we see, is set out on Page 8. It appears the hope is that testing of year 11 and 13 may get underway before the end of wc 4th January 2021.


We are sure that you will be able to address the procedural side of things and pose particular blocks and barriers back to the support that is listed. DS is concentrating on the hazards posed and the control measures that can be deployed to minimise the risks associated with them. We note on this aspect there is still detail to emerge.


We will issue our updated risk assessment as early as we can next week for your use if needed. We are debating whether it will be Issue 3.6 or whether, due to the extent of things to take on board it becomes Issue 4.0. As usual we'll cover this when we write and there'll be the supporting notes that must be read with it to help.


We suspect one of the immediate questions is around potential deployment of people without a DBS check. Our anticipation there is that you update your existing RAs that cover your day to day operations for such circumstances to cover the testing facility. However, and of course, if you have any immediate questions, don't hesitate to get in touch.


****


All the best.


Bill

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