Who Is Liable If Something Goes Wrong During an Interim Placement?

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and trustees

Boards rarely ask this before a placement starts and always ask it afterwards. A safeguarding incident, a serious complaint, a regulatory finding, and the question surfaces: whose responsibility was that?

Many proprietors tell us they’d assumed that engaging someone through a provider meant the provider carried the risk. It’s an understandable assumption and it isn’t how it works.

This isn’t legal advice and your own adviser and insurer should confirm your position. What follows is the shape of it, and the things worth settling before rather than after.

Where does accountability actually sit?

With the school, and in an independent school, with the proprietor.

The duties that matter most in a school setting are placed on the school and its proprietor or governing body, not on individual staff and not on suppliers. The Independent School Standards require the proprietor to ensure things happen. Safeguarding duties attach to the setting. A regulator finding a failure will look to the school, whoever was in post at the time.

That’s the important point and it doesn’t change with the engagement route. Appointing an interim delegates the doing. It doesn’t delegate the accountability.

What can shift is where financial liability lands as between the school, the interim and any provider, and that’s a matter of contract and insurance rather than of regulation. Those two things are often confused, and it’s worth holding them apart.

What do the three engagement routes mean?

Through a provider. The provider engages the interim and invoices you. Their contract will set out what they’re responsible for, what they warrant about vetting and suitability, and what they exclude. Read those exclusions, because most provider terms limit liability significantly. A good provider will carry professional indemnity cover and will say so in writing.

Direct with a limited company. You contract with the interim’s own company. Liability as between you is whatever the contract says, backed by whatever insurance the company holds. Ask to see the certificate rather than accepting an assurance, and check the level is appropriate to headship in your kind of setting.

Fixed term employment. You employ the interim directly. They’re covered by your own insurances as a member of staff, and your responsibilities as an employer apply in full.

In all three, the school’s regulatory accountability is unchanged. What differs is who bears a financial loss and who can be pursued for it.

What should you check before the placement starts?

Six things, and each of them takes minutes.

Your own insurance. Tell your insurer you’re engaging an interim leader and get written confirmation that your cover responds. Some policies have conditions about who leads the setting. Discovering that after a claim is a bad way to find out.

The interim’s or provider’s insurance. Professional indemnity and public liability, at a level appropriate to headship. See the certificate.

The contract terms on liability and indemnity. Who indemnifies whom, for what, and up to what limit. Have your adviser look at this.

Delegated authority in figures. Most disputes about responsibility start as disputes about whether someone was authorised to do something.

Safer recruitment evidence held by you. If a question arises later, the ability to produce your own file matters. A provider’s assurance is not the same as your record.

The safeguarding position. Whether the interim holds the designated safeguarding lead role, and confirmation in writing that they’ll follow your procedures.

What happens if a safeguarding incident occurs?

The school’s duties apply exactly as they always do, and the interim’s status is irrelevant to them.

Referrals are made, the LADO is involved where an allegation concerns an adult, records are preserved, the regulator is notified where required. None of that is affected by how the person leading the school is paid.

The proprietor remains accountable for whether safeguarding arrangements were adequate. An investigation will ask whether the school made a suitable appointment, completed the checks including the single central record, gave a proper induction, and provided the authority and information the person needed to do the job. Those are all school decisions.

Where the interim’s own conduct is in question, that’s a matter for the LADO process, for their own professional position, and potentially for their insurance. It doesn’t relieve the school of anything.

Where do proprietors get caught out?

Four situations, all avoidable.

Assuming the provider carries everything. Provider terms almost always limit liability, sometimes to the value of the fees. Read them before you need them.

Insurance not notified. A policy that assumed a permanent headteacher may respond differently when the school has been led on an interim basis for two terms.

Missing safer recruitment evidence. Not because the checks weren’t done, but because the school never obtained its own record of them. In a dispute or an inspection, this is the hardest position to be in.

Unclear authority. An interim makes a decision, it goes badly, and there’s no written record of whether they were entitled to make it. Both sides then have a reasonable case, which is the worst possible starting point.

From our experience

Genuine liability disputes are rare. What’s common is a school that can’t evidence what it did, and that turns an ordinary difficulty into a serious one.

We often find the checks were carried out properly by a provider, the placement went well, and the school holds nothing on file. Everything was fine and none of it can be shown, which for an inspection or an insurer amounts to the same thing.

Many proprietors tell us they’d never told their insurer about the arrangement. It’s an entirely understandable oversight and it’s a five minute phone call.

The other thing worth saying is that we’ve seen boards attempt to place responsibility on an interim after the event for decisions the board never authorised or documented. That rarely succeeds and it damages a school’s reputation in a small professional world.

A common misconception

“We used a provider, so if something goes wrong it’s on them.”

It’s the assumption we encounter most often and it’s the one that causes the most difficulty.

A provider can be responsible under contract for the quality of their introduction, the checks they warranted, and their own professional conduct. What they cannot do is take on the school’s regulatory accountability, because that isn’t theirs to take. The standards place duties on the proprietor, and a regulator will come to you.

The practical answer isn’t to avoid providers, who genuinely reduce risk by holding checks and knowing their candidates. It’s to understand that engaging one adds a layer of protection rather than transferring the responsibility, and to hold your own evidence accordingly.

The children in your school are your responsibility whoever is standing at the front of it. That’s the principle underneath all of this and it’s the right one.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Have we told our insurer about the interim arrangement and received written confirmation?
• Have we seen the professional indemnity certificate, and is the level appropriate?
• Have we read the provider’s liability exclusions?
• Is the interim’s delegated authority written down in figures?
• Could we produce our own safer recruitment evidence for this person today?

Our perspective

The honest position is that accountability stays with the school and always did. That’s not a reason to avoid interim leadership. It’s a reason to appoint properly and document what you did.

Notify your insurer, see the certificates, read the exclusions, write down the authority, and hold your own evidence of the checks. Those five things take an hour and they turn a theoretical risk into a manageable one.

Then get on with the work, which is making sure the school runs well for the children and young people in it. That’s what the placement is for, and a board that has settled the mechanics properly is free to concentrate on it.