The application process

Priority Applications will be open from Thursday 1 March for two weeks to anyone who has stewarded for us in 2009, 2010 or 2011. After that, we plan to make any remaining places available to the public on Thursday 15 March. Applications for each festival will close when the stewarding places at that festival are full, however you will be able to add your name to our waiting list.

Applications for each festival will close when the stewarding places at that festival are full. On occasion we may need to re-open recruitment, so if you are interested in stewarding at a closed festival please add your details to the waiting list and keep checking your email and the stewarding website.

For more information about the waiting list, please see the question below: 'A festival I want to steward at is full – how does the waiting list work?'.

You can only apply for stewarding online via the Oxfam stewarding website. If you don't have access to a computer, we recommend you go to your local library or internet café.

To upload your photo, click on the browse button, then navigate to where you have saved the photo on the computer and click OK. The photo must be a clear photo of you as it will be used to identify you onsite, for guidelines on providing an acceptable photograph please see: The Identity & Passport Service photo guidelines (pdf)

Please note, if the photo is too big, more than 4.5 cm (height) and 3.5 cm (width), the form will not accept it and you will need to resize or crop your photo. For guidelines on resizing your photo please see: The Resizr easy photo editing guide or A guide to cropping images in Photoshop
If you are using other image editing software, please refer to their guidelines on cropping and resizing images.

At the bottom of each of the web pages there is a save for later button, you can click this button wherever it appears during the application process, then close your browser.

Saving your form uses cookies (computer memory), so you can only save one application form at a time on an individual computer. Do not save your form on shared or public computers, because if someone else tries to write a stewarding application on the same computer, they may get access to your information, and you will lose your form. To complete your application you will need to return to the computer you saved it on.

To reload your partially completed application, you will need to return to the stewarding application form, then move to the bottom of the page and click on 'Load from before'. Your saved application should reappear.

Once you have started your application, you can save a partially completed application for up to 30 days. It is essential you use the same computer and same browser when continuing with your application. Saving your application does not submit it and festivals may become full during the time you take to complete the form. To ensure a place at your chosen festival, we recommend that you complete your application in one go and submit it with your deposit payment as soon as possible.

During the Priority Application Period:
You need to log back to your application using the link sent to you in your Priority Application email, use your steward ID sent in the email, together with the username and password entered on stage 7 of the application form, then follow the instructions below.

Once applications have opened to the public:
You need to go back into the application form, and log on with your User name and Password (as they were entered onto your application form) so that the form will recognise you and bring up your previous application. All the information that you entered when you first applied will be present, so please check this thoroughly and make changes if any of it is out of date.

On Stage 3 you will need to resubmit your declaration about unspent criminal convictions. When you get to Stage 4, click on the name of the festival you want to apply for.

Please note: On Stage 4, you will see the full list of festivals that can be applied for, including the ones you have already applied for. The form will not allow you to apply for them (as you it knows you've already applied) and it will show an error if you do try submit the same Festival again.

Fill in all the relevant information for the festival you wish to apply for and click Submit. Repeat this for each festival that you add. The information previously entered on Stage 6 will not be present. So in your first application if you:

• selected that you had done training, select the relevant year again.
• booked onto a training session tick 'I have already booked or attended a training session in 2012'.
• ticked that you couldn't attend any of the sessions, select that again.

If you need to change the training session you are booked to attend because your first Festival is now before your training session, please contact us at stewards@oxfam.org.uk explaining this. Please indicate which sessions you could attend, even if some of them are full, just in case we've received a cancellation. On Stage 7 you will be able to review and submit your application. If your application for further festival(s) has been successful, you will receive a confirmation email from Oxfam with the names of the festival(s) you have just added.

If a festival is full and we have started a waiting list, the words 'waiting list' will be displayed next to the festival name. You will be asked to enter your first name, last name and email address.

When you add your name to the waiting list you will see a confirmation page. Your details will be stored on a separate database and if for any reason we get a high drop-out rate, or we are asked to provide more stewards at that festival, we will send you an email to let you know when we are re-opening applications for that festival. You will then be able to apply for that festival as soon as applications open again to the general public.

The email we send gives you advance warning that applications will be opening again, so that you can apply as soon as it is re-opened, but does not give you priority over other applicants. If you are really keen to steward at a certain festival, keep the dates free, as places may become available anytime up to the week before. Often if we reopen a festival, places go very fast, so if you receive the email from us that we will be re-opening a festival and you are a new applicant you may want to begin your application (personal details, uploading a photo etc) and "save for later", WITHOUT selecting a festival, submitting or paying a deposit. If you later try to complete your application, you will need to use exactly the same computer and in the application click on 'load from before'.

If we only have a few spaces available, experienced stewards who are on the waiting list may be contacted first.

As many as you like, as long as they don't clash. If you apply for lots of festivals please make sure that you have enough time, or annual leave, to attend them.

Our computer systems will not send two emails to the same email address, so if two stewards apply using the same email address one person will not receive emails about their application or about attending festivals they have applied for. If you share another steward's email please set yourself up with a free online email account, such as Google, Yahoo or Hotmail for the purposes of this application. Please use a different email address for each person who applies. We will be sending you important information via email throughout the festival season so please ensure that you will have access to this email inbox.

Similar to applying for a job, we would consider a college lecturer, employer, or someone who knows you in a formal capacity to be appropriate. Your referee will be emailed with a form to return to us stating their relationship to you and whether they consider you to be suitable to act as an Oxfam steward. Your referee will also need to confirm that they have known you for over six months and are not related to you. Please do not enter the name of a relative or someone who has known you for a short time. If we fail to get a satisfactory response from your referee we will contact you, otherwise you can assume that your reference was successful.

CRB checking tends to be for a designated geographical area. Anyone who is allocated a role involving children (e.g. stewarding the children’s area, found child escort) must have an up to date CRB check. If you are selected to carry out one of the above roles in advance of the festival, we will ask your permission to apply for an advanced CRB check on your behalf. The question on the application form regarding CRB checks will act as an indicator for us in the selection process, if you have experienced working with children and have passed a CRB check in the past.

Certain festivals are being spot-checked by the Department of Work and Pensions for people volunteering and working without the valid permissions to do so. We are now being required to provide National Insurance numbers and heights for all our stewards attending these festivals in order for pre-checks to be conducted. Your details will not be passed to any third parties.

Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, offenders are required to declare any unspent convictions when applying for voluntary or paid roles. Oxfam will take any unspent convictions into account when assessing suitability for different stewarding roles. Individuals who are being managed under the criminal justice system are classified as vulnerable workers, leading to a requirement for Oxfam to assess the reasonable adjustments these individuals may need for individual voluntary positions.

With so many volunteers on our database, we have quite a few with the same names. We need this additional piece of information to make sure you are paired up with the right person.

N.B For your application to submit, you must enter their date of birth in this format DD/MM/YYYY which includes a 4 digit year of birth

Firstly check your Spam/Junk folder, as the email(s) may be there. You should then add these addresses to your contacts so that future emails will be accepted into your Inbox.

If the email is not in your junk mail but you were directed to a confirmation pagea after you processed your payment which stated your WorldPay transaction number, then your application and payment will have been received. You can double check this by emailing stewards@oxfam.org.uk.

If you didn't see a confirmation page with a WorldPay transaction number, then your payment has not gone through.

If one or more of the festivals that you wanted to steward are available please call 0300 200 1266 to discuss. Please have your payment card ready when you call as we may need to take your payment over the phone if it has failed.

Oxfam are not able to arrange a refund on your ticket price and you will need to pay the full deposit when you apply. Please look at the individual festival’s website for information on ticket refund and returns.

Once we receive your application your personal information will be stored on our stewarding database. We will use the information to allocate you to festivals and roles, and to facilitate your attendance at the festivals. We will be sharing your name with the organisers of the festival/s you are going to, so that they can issue the relevant people/ vehicle passes. For some festivals we may need to share your name and date of birth with the local Police to allow them to carry out Police National Computer (PNC) checks. You are asked to agree to this on your application form.

If you have expressed an interest in finding out more about Oxfam, we will share your contact details with other departments within Oxfam. We will not share your personal information with anyone else.

A small number of previous applicants may be placed on the Oxfam stewarding'Denied list'. If you have 'denied status' your application will not be accepted.

The possible reasons for this are:

• You did not complete your shifts at a previous festival
• You did not show up at a festival where we were expecting you and didn’t let us know,
• You are a 'serial canceller' and have never actually turned up for a festival,
• We felt that you did not comply with Oxfam’s terms and conditions on site.

If you have 'denied status' you should have been informed of this by Oxfam previously. However if you feel that this is unfair, please contact stewards@oxfam.org.uk and we will be happy to discuss your application.

Due to the way our application system works, when you log back in to add an additional festival application, you will NOT see the festivals you have already applied for in the list of festivals in stage 4.

Please do not worry about this, as you will have already had them confirmed in your confirmation email.