The Nights Away Permit Scheme
The Nights Away Permit Scheme promotes quality residential and camping experiences. It shows that all those leading nights away events for young people within Scouts have the skills, experience and personal suitability to take young people away safely.
It’s designed so that it can be tailored to be as flexible as possible, while at the same time providing a robust checking process for volunteers leading nights away events.
The permit should be seen as an enabling device to show a volunteers competence and to provide reassurance to parents of the young people. While at the same time, it should also be encouraging to volunteers to acquire and improve the skills required to provide residential experiences.
Permits are only available to volunteers of The Scout Association and cease to be valid if membership ends.
What’s the Nights Away Permit Scheme?
Everyone who leads a nights away event for young people within Scouts is required to hold a Nights Away Permit for the type of event they’re running.
Although managed locally, the Nights Away Permit Scheme is a national scheme, so once gained, a permit will allow you to run a nights away event in any District or County.
How the Scheme works
Who grants the permit?
The person who grants your permit will be your responsible Lead Volunteer or Permit Approver In most circumstances, this will be at District Lead Volunteer (DLV) if you’ve a Group or District role and your County if you’ve a County role.
A Lead Volunteer or Permit Approver can only grant a permit to the level of the recommendation of the Nights Away Assessor. The Nights Away Assessor will provide a recommendation after an assessment based on the Nights Away Assessment Checklist.
How long is a permit valid for?
A permit is time limited up to a maximum of five years at which point it expires. A permit is only valid if recorded on the membership system.
If you wish to continue leading nights away events for young people, you’ll need to apply for a new permit. However, if the new permit’s to exactly the same level as the old permit and you’ve been running residential events, there may be no need for a practical assessment. That decision is up to the Nights Away Assessor.
Do I need to attend a module 16 or module 38 learning modules?
There are no prior conditions to gaining a permit, so there’s no requirement to have attended a Module 16 (Introduction to Residential Experiences) or Module 38 (Skills for Residential Experiences) learning module.
The Nights Away Permit Scheme is different to these modules, so there’s no requirement to gain a Nights Away Permit to complete your accreditation.
Validating modules 16 and 38 doesn’t automatically grant you a Nights Away Permit.
However, gaining a permit is one way of validating modules 16 and 38, and it’s the best way to gain the skills and knowledge needed for a Nights Away Permit where learning is required.
Nights Away Permit Scheme
