! 1) 2) 3) Falsifying or concealing the nature of the event or information about the external speaker as requested above may result in the event being postponed or cancelled. What happens next? Thank you for taking the time to submit your application for an external speaker. The Approving Officer will have two working days to review your application and report back to you. In the majority of cases there will be no concerns raised, in which case the event will go ahead as planned, and the speaker will only be required to sign up to the institution’s Equality and Diversity Statement.33 If the Approving Officer has concerns, they will conduct a further investigation into the speaker and within three working days pass their assessment on to a panel of university staff and students for consideration. The panel will make their judgement within four working days. The speaker may be approved, in which case the event will proceed as planned. The speaker may be approved with certain conditions put in place, or the application may be rejected. Both of these decisions can be appealed by writing to the chair of the External Speaker Assessment Panel, who will review the evidence and reply within two working days. It is highly unlikely that the speaker application will be rejected, as the criteria for this is very narrow (see Section Four). However, if the speaker is considered ‘High Risk’, additional speakers will need to be invited to balance the platform. In this situation it may be necessary to delay the event by five working days to achieve this. (See Section Five for an overview of the process to apply for an external speaker) 3.2 Initial Checks [For the Approving Officer.] This review must be completed within two working days, at which point the principal organiser should be made aware of the conclusion of these initial checks. Section One of the application should be reviewed by checking any links provided by the principal organiser. An internet search, using the same search engine as the principal organiser, should be repeated by the Approving Officer: “[SPEAKER’S NAME]” AND “extremism” OR “terrorism” OR “hatred” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Institutions should provide students with directions detailing where to find the Equality and Diversity Statement as part of the speaker form. However, as is already the case for a number of institutions such as the University of Westminster, contact with the speaker requesting the statement be signed should be made by the Approving Officer. 15! !