DSL handover

What KCSIE says about the role, and why a handover matters

Part two of Keeping children safe in education 2026 (KCSIE 2026), the Department for Education's statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England, says that governing bodies and proprietors "should ensure an appropriate senior member of staff, from the school or college leadership team, is appointed to the role of designated safeguarding lead" (paragraph 127). The designated safeguarding lead "should take lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection (including online safety and understanding the filtering and monitoring systems and processes in place)", and that should be explicit in the role holder's job description.

That answers the question most often asked at the point of change: who can be the DSL? A senior member of staff from the leadership team, with "the appropriate status, authority, skills and experience" to do the job, given "the additional time, funding, training, resources, and support" it needs (paragraph 128). KCSIE is explicit that it is not appropriate for the proprietor to be the designated safeguarding lead.

Annex B, which describes the role in detail, adds the sentence that makes a handover matter. Schools may choose to have one or more deputies, trained to the same standard, and the activities of the role can be delegated to them, but "the ultimate lead responsibility for child protection, as set out above, remains with the designated safeguarding lead, this lead responsibility should not be delegated."

So at every moment someone holds that responsibility by name. KCSIE does not set out a handover procedure; it does not use the word. What it does set out is a list of things the DSL is responsible for, from keeping child protection files up to date to liaising with the case manager and the local authority designated officer on concerns about staff. A handover is simply the point at which every item on that list has to change hands, and the governing body is the one that appoints.

When a handover happens, and how much notice you get

The textbook handover is a planned departure at the end of the summer term with a successor already appointed. Most are less tidy, and experienced DSLs will recognise some version of each of these:

• A planned change – retirement, a move to another school, or a deputy stepping up. There is time for an overlap, and the risk is complacency: the outgoing DSL assumes the files speak for themselves.
• An internal restructure – a trust moves the role between members of the leadership team, or splits it across phases. The person changes while the files and systems stay put, which makes it easy to forget that access rights, contact lists and the policy all name the old holder.
• Long-term absence – illness, maternity or other leave. Someone else carries the lead for months while the substantive DSL still holds the post.
• A sudden departure – resignation with little notice, a suspension, or a death in service. There is no handover meeting at all, and what the deputy inherits is whatever was written down.
• Short absences – a course, a residential trip, a day off sick. KCSIE now expects "robust cover arrangements" for these as well, covered in section 05.

The sudden departure is the one to plan for, because it is the test of everything else. If the handover in the best case depends on a long conversation with the outgoing DSL, the school is one resignation away from losing what that conversation would have carried.

What must transfer: the live cases

Start with the children, because that is where a gap does harm. The outgoing DSL and the successor should go through a written list of every child the DSL is actively involved with, and the successor should be able to say, for each one, what happens next and when. In most schools that list includes:

• Children subject to a child protection plan, with the social worker's name, the date of the next review conference and core group, and what the school has agreed to do under the plan.
• Children in need and those receiving targeted early help through Family Help, with the lead practitioner and the school's part in the plan.
• Looked-after and previously looked-after children, where the DSL works alongside the designated teacher and the virtual school head.
• Referrals awaiting an outcome – to children's social care, to the police, or to the Channel programme where there is a radicalisation concern – and any referral the DSL decided not to make, with the reason.
• Concerns and allegations about staff being handled with the case manager and the local authority designated officer, and any low-level concerns under review. These are confidential and belong in the handover only to the extent the successor has a role in them.
• Child-on-child incidents with risk assessments or safety plans still in force.
• Children arriving or leaving mid-year, where a child protection file is due in or out, or a receipt has not come back.
• Children missing education or with patterns of absence the DSL is following up.
• Children the DSL is keeping an eye on – the cases below any threshold where the DSL has a feeling, a pattern forming or a promise to a child to check in. These are the ones least likely to be written down and most likely to be lost.

For each child, the handover should point to the child protection file rather than retell it. If the file does not already show the current position, the handover is the moment to bring it up to date, because Annex B makes the DSL "responsible for ensuring that child protection files are kept up to date" and requires records that "distinguish between observed concerns, professional opinion, and historic information". A chronology at the front of each open file is the fastest way for a successor to understand a case they did not see develop.

What must transfer: records, systems, relationships and the calendar

The cases sit on top of an infrastructure the outgoing DSL may have built without ever describing it. The handover should walk through each part:

• Where the records are. The electronic safeguarding system and who holds administrator rights; paper files, which cabinet, and who holds the keys; archived files for children who have left and are still within their retention period.
• Access rights. Give the successor full access before the outgoing DSL leaves, and remove or reduce the outgoing DSL's access on the day they stop holding the role. Access is limited to "those who need to see it", and a former DSL no longer does.
• The DSL's own working material. Notebooks, email folders, a personal task list, a spreadsheet of children being tracked. Anything that is part of a child's record belongs in the child protection file; anything else should be reviewed and disposed of securely.
• The concern route. The shared safeguarding inbox or form, who receives it, and the out-of-hours arrangement.
• Online safety. The filtering and monitoring systems the DSL is expected to understand, the reports they receive, who in IT support to contact, and the date and record of the last annual review.
• Relationships. The children's social care front door, named social workers, the local authority designated officer, the police schools liaison, the local Prevent contact, the virtual school, the school nurse and any mental health support team. Introductions matter; a successor who has to find these people during a crisis loses a day.
• The calendar. Conferences, core groups, strategy meetings, the annual review of the child protection policy, the section 175 audit or equivalent return, staff training dates and the report to governors.
• Policy and people. The child protection policy and anything else that names the DSL, the staff handbook, posters and the website, and the list of deputies with their training dates.

Then tell everyone. KCSIE requires staff to be told "the role of the designated safeguarding lead (including the identity of the designated safeguarding lead and any deputies)" at induction, which means existing staff need telling when that identity changes: a staff briefing, updated posters and the policy re-issued. Parents rely on the published policy, which Annex B requires to be publicly available. The local authority and your safeguarding partners will usually hold a DSL contact list for the school, and the governing body should record the new appointment in its minutes.

Cover for absence, training, and the handover note

KCSIE 2026 added a paragraph on cover. Paragraph 129 says that "to ensure continuity of safeguarding responsibilities, schools should implement robust cover arrangements for periods when the designated safeguarding lead is unavailable due to illness, leave, or other circumstances", and gives as an example "a confidential shared mailbox or equivalent system" so that concerns are received and acted on without delay. Annex B adds that it would be good practice for there to be "a clear, reliable, and known arrangement in place so that concerns can be raised" whenever the DSL is unavailable.

Annex B also says that during term time the DSL or a deputy "should always be available (during school or college hours)" to discuss concerns. Schools decide, with the DSL, what "available" means and whether phone or video is acceptable in exceptional circumstances, and they arrange cover for out-of-hours and out-of-term activities. A good cover rota answers three questions a member of staff might have on a bad day: who do I tell, how do I reach them, and what if they do not answer?

Training has its own rules, and a successor's record should show them. The DSL and any deputies "should undergo training to provide them with the knowledge and skills required to carry out the role", updated "at least every two years"; they "should also undertake Prevent awareness training"; and their knowledge should be refreshed "at regular intervals, as required, and at least annually". A deputy stepping up is already trained to the same standard; an external appointment needs their training dates checked on arrival. Our guide to safeguarding training records covers how to evidence the cycle.

Finally, the handover itself should leave a record. A short handover note, dated and signed by both people and seen by the headteacher, should list the open cases by reference, the systems and access transferred, the introductions made, the dates coming up and anything the outgoing DSL was unable to hand over. It is not a second child protection file and should not repeat what is in one. Its purpose is to show that the lead responsibility moved on a known date to a named person who knew what they were taking on.

What the outgoing DSL knows that is not in the file

Ask an experienced DSL where a case really lives and the honest answer is: partly in the file, partly in their head, and partly in their phone. The social worker who texts rather than emails. The parent who messages the DSL directly because that is the number they were given at a difficult meeting. The deputy who asks "any news on Year 8?" in a staff group chat at nine in the evening, and the reply that says what the police said on the phone. The head's message on a Sunday, "can we talk about the allegation first thing?", and the answer that sets the plan for Monday.

Each of those exchanges is part of a safeguarding record. KCSIE expects the DSL to keep "detailed, accurate, secure written records of all concerns, discussions and decisions made including the rationale for those decisions". When they took place on the DSL's personal phone, the school's record of them is whatever the DSL later typed up. On the day the DSL leaves, the phone leaves too, and the successor inherits the typed-up version and none of the context around it.

A school cannot copy a departing member of staff's phone at will, though it can ask them to search it and pass on anything that belongs in a child's file. And a policy that says "do not use your phone" without offering something as quick simply moves the conversations elsewhere. What a school can do is give those work conversations somewhere to happen that it controls. ComplyChat provides a channel for them, with everyone added told that it is on the record, and a mobile number verified by SMS is an identity on it, so a parent or a colleague without a school account can be in the conversation. Messages are recorded on the server as they are sent. On paid plans, once the school's Microsoft 365 tenant is connected, the lasting record files there under the school's own retention rules, so what was said about a case does not leave with the person who said it. ComplyChat is not a safeguarding case-management system and does not replace the child protection file; it is where the conversations around it can be kept. ComplyChat Free is personal messaging with one private group, direct messages and three calendar months of recent history, with no Microsoft 365 archive.

A question for the next leadership or governors' meeting: if our DSL left on Friday without a handover, which of the conversations they have had this term about live cases could the school produce on Monday, and which would leave with them?

Official guidance and your next step

The primary source is Keeping children safe in education 2026: paragraphs 127 to 131 in Part two for the appointment, deputies and cover, and Annex B for the role in full, including availability, training and the child protection file. It is read alongside Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, and your local safeguarding partnership sets the referral routes and contacts the new DSL will use. NSPCC Learning publishes practical material for school safeguarding leads. Quotations here are from KCSIE 2026 as published for 1 September 2026; check the date on the copy you are working from.

This guide is a practical summary of statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England, not legal advice and not a substitute for your own child protection policy or local procedures. Independent schools and colleges should read the wording that applies to them, and a trust should check whether its own policy sets a handover procedure.

Then do one thing: ask your DSL to write, today, the list in section 03 for the children they are currently most involved with, and check that each item on it points to a file the deputy can open. If any of it cannot be written down from the files alone, that is the part a handover would lose.