To be annoyed that school trip is cancelled and likely no refund

[CancelledLondonTrip]

First off my thoughts are with the victims and their families in Manchester. It was a terrible unpredictable attack on innocent children.

In light of this attack, our school is cancelling their year 6 trip to London.

I would rather the trip goes ahead, as the actual risk to our children in London from an terrorist attack is tiny. Especially with the heightened security.

The school have also said as everything has already been paid for it is unlikely we will get a refund on the £150 (three day trip) cost, as it has already been spent on train tickets, hostels, museum tickets and a show. All non refundable.

Aibu to expect the school to either run the trip OR refund 100% of the trip money OR even give the parents who still want to go the tickets and let us use the teachers tickets and we could take our children down ourselves ?

For the school to cancel the trip and for all the parents to lose all the money doesn't seem to be a fair solution.

Do the school just expect you all to lose hundreds of pounds without having first consulted with you?

This sounds like a knee jerk reaction to me and even if it's not they should be giving you their reasons for cancelling.

They should definitely give a refund if it's their decision - as for the governors, maybe they should fork out for it . Some people may have struggled to pay apart from anything else

I would expect the school to give me my money back
It was their decision to cancel
They should be insured though surely

Any yes, also demanding my money back

The threat level and the army on the streets suggests there is an ongoing risk of an attack, perhaps from the same network/bomb maker, perhaps targeting children.

Can't blame someone who, acting in an official capacity, decides not to take a crowd of children somewhere the army have been brought in to guard under those circumstances.

I have been struggling to pay for it. I am so cross with them. They are being so illogical and reactionary.

I'd expect a refund. £150 is a lot of money to us.

I''d contact the governors if the HT won't back down.

The school's decision, the school's lack of insurance, the school should take the hit.

Its got nothing to do with whether it's money you can afford to lose or not , £150 wouldn't be an issue to me it's the principal that they can't just decide to cancel and keep your money .

The school have presumably updated their risk assessment and decided it's too risky.
If they won't be refunded you can't expect them to refund you.
It's a shame but if they went and got caught up in something. Much much worse. Then everyone would be berating them for taking such a stupid risk.

Ask them to explain to you why they were happy to run the trip at all given that their risk assessment should have already proved that the chance of a road traffic accident is significantly more likely than that of a terrorist attack, even with the threat level raised to critical.

Because if they are prepared to cancel the trip on the grounds they have given, they were never fit to run a trip in the first place because it sounds as if their risk assessments are done on knee-jerk emotional reaction rather than on a careful statistical basis.

I would be pushing very hard for a refund of my money on that basis.

I agree that, as it is the school's decision to cancel the trip, they should refund the parents. I suspect that, even if they had cancellation insurance, it wouldn't cover this cancellation - it would,have to be cancelled due to official advice (e.g. if there was Foreign Office advice to avoid a particular country, cancelling a trip to that country would,probably be covered by insurance). Since there is no official advice for trips to avoid London, I doubt the insurance would pay out.

They did a full risk assessment last week before the Manchester attack and declared everything safe and the trip was to precede as planned.

Despite 10 parents who overacted who withdrew their children from the trip at that point.

My opinion was that at that time we had had the same risk level for the previous three years and in that time the school had taken year 6 children there tines to London with no problems!

Once the risk level drops again next week, we will be back in the same situation that the school had already signed off as safe.

Sadly there have been many terrorist attacks In the uk and we have been at risk for years. I do understand people's reluctance to go to big cities but the risk is the same now as it was on Monday morning.

The problem with insurance is this:

Those travellers who decide not to visit a destination after an attack, for example, or who want to cut short their trip after an incident, are usually ineligible for cancellation payouts (see below) from insurers.

If the government are advising against travel to London, then the school will be covered, but if this is not the case, then they won't be. Thus the school will have to find the money to refund you all from elsewhere. Which I actually think they should do.

I assume the school has insurance incase of a trip being cancelled. However, it is unlikely to pay in such a circumstances. Unless someone official higher up has said that schools cannot travel to London (I think this happened in Paris???) then an insurance firm isn't going to pay up.

I am not sure what to say re not being paid back money. Parents won't have their own insurance to cover a school tip being cancelled, like they would if any other business cancelled their booked trip. It seems really unfair on parents, esp as some will have paid in full and some possibly not finished paying (due to instalments) - some some lose more than others too. But I doubt school funds can over it.

Maybe the school could look into offering the tickets to individual families who may look to buy them?? They'd need to talk to the venue though. And they'd need to permit parents to take children out of school as an authorised day off.

The school should have been doing a number of things in the run -up to this trip. They will have carried out a risk assessment of all the activities that were planned for the trip along with the actual trip itself. If they had any sense they will also have taken out some cancellation insurance. They should have also been communicating properly with parents and ensuring that the money for the trip will have been collected in good time.
£150 does sound quite cheap for 3 day trip to London, so my first concern would be why 10 of the 40 pupils going pulled out last week. That was clearly not related to the atrocity on Monday. So had the school failed to collect in the money for the trip and the 10 were the parents who had not paid up?
What should have happened after news of Monday was a re-assessment of the risk in the trip to London. In my opinion if done properly that should have come to a conclusion that there was not a significant increase in the risk. I would not have expected any Local Authority to be offering advice to cancel, as they must know that the risk is the same across the whole country - just as we found out on Monday evening. So must have been a school decision to cancel.
To then just be saying tough luck to parents, the £150 is gone is just unacceptable. They should have had trip insurance to start with and secondly they obviously made the decision to cancel without thinking through the consequences.
For the school to find 30 lots of £150, which is £4500 is unrealistic - it simply will not be available, but the school do need to do something they cannot just hide behind sorry. I would ask for your money back in writing and get the head teacher to confirm in writing why there will be no return of money. I would then make a formal complaint to the Chair of Governors about the fact that the school appear to have lost £150 of your hard earned money and what are they going to do about it, given the Head teacher has no answer.

You are right though - parents should be eligible for a refund if a trip is cancelled by the school.

Do people seriously think that all parents can just shrug their shoulders and write off throwing away £150 like it's nothing? Many parents will have saved for months to send their kids on the trip. The school need to give them their money back somehow.

As it's a school trip they will probably have insurance arranged by the local authority. Worth checking out.

Insurance will only pay out for specified reasons though - not just because you've changed your mind about going.

Insurance isn't the same as a refund policy - you can't just decide you don't want to go and get all your money back from insurance.

They absolutely should be refunding the parents.

YADNBU. I'd be incandescent.

YADNBU. The likelihood that they're more likely to be hurt going to school each day than by a terrorist aside, they've got a massive bloody cheek deciding to cancel and keep your money.

In the circumstances described I'd very much be expecting a refund. £150 is not money I could afford to write off.