Over the weekend, we took the difficult decision to cancel all remaining Kent Summer Fest activity a week early, along with all other non-essential student activity on campus. This is due to a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases among students on our Canterbury campus, meaning we had no choice but to take this precautionary step.

I know this will be hugely disappointing for many of our students and it is not something we wanted to do. However, the safety of everyone on campus has to remain our top priority and we did not feel we had any other choice once the number of positive cases became clear. This also followed advice from the local Health Protection Team who confirmed this was the ‘responsible action’ for us to take.

Our focus now is on supporting all students who were due to leave on-campus accommodation on 3 July to return home as soon as possible, once they have completed all testing requirements in line with the latest Government travel guidance. We have written to all our on-campus residents and event ticket holders and will be writing again today to all of our students based at Canterbury. There is also more information on on-site testing on our Covid-19 webpages.

I would like to thank everybody for the huge effort they’ve put in to coordinating Kent Summer Fest, which was a true team effort across the University. At its heart, the events were an attempt to give our students an opportunity to come together and mark the end of what has been such a challenging year – it is a real shame for everyone that the ongoing pandemic has once again got in the way of our plans.

I would also like to thank all of our staff across a number of areas who are pulling out all the stops to support students with getting testing, self-isolating when they need to, and keeping our campuses safe for everyone. All of your effort and commitment across the year has been truly exemplary and I am humbled to be working with so many dedicated colleagues.

With all best wishes,

Richard

Professor Richard Reece | Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Chair of Covid-19 Silver Command