Is it a statutory role?
No. There is no role called “trust safeguarding lead” in Keeping children safe in education 2026 (KCSIE) or in Working together to safeguard children 2026. Trusts create it themselves, and call it different things: trust safeguarding lead, head of safeguarding, or director of safeguarding.
What the law and guidance do set out are the duties of the trust board. KCSIE 2026 (footnote 20) says that for academies, free schools and alternative provision academies, the proprietor is the academy trust. So wherever KCSIE says “governing bodies and proprietors”, in a multi-academy trust (MAT) it means the trust board.
A trust safeguarding lead is usually how the board and its executive leaders make sure those duties are met in every school.
What KCSIE says the trust board must do
KCSIE Part two sets out the board’s responsibilities:
- Strategic leadership. Boards have “a strategic leadership responsibility” for safeguarding arrangements, must comply with their legal duties and must have regard to KCSIE, making sure policies, procedures and training are effective (paragraph 84).
- A board-level lead. Boards should have “a senior board level (or equivalent) lead” for safeguarding (paragraph 86). In a trust this is a trustee. The trust safeguarding lead is a member of staff, so it is a different role.
- Training for trustees at induction, updated regularly (paragraph 87).
- A DSL in each school, appointed from the school’s leadership team and given the status, authority, time and resources to do the job (paragraphs 127 and 128), with robust cover when the DSL is away (paragraph 129).
- Local safeguarding arrangements. All schools, “including those in multi-academy trusts”, should be fully engaged in local safeguarding arrangements (paragraph 135). Once safeguarding partners name a school as a relevant agency, it has a statutory duty to co-operate with them.
- The single central record. MATs must keep a single central record covering every academy. It doesn’t have to be a separate record for each one, but details for each academy must be available separately and without delay, including to inspectors (paragraph 354).
The DfE’s academy trust governance guide adds that:
- all boards should have trustees with strategic oversight of safeguarding, including the Prevent duty (section 4.3)
- trustees should promote “a whole-trust approach” to wellbeing, safeguarding and child protection (section 1.1.1)
- all trustees, local committee members and the governance professional should read and follow Part two of KCSIE (section 4.7)
Delegation: what can and can’t be passed on
The governance guide says the board can delegate most operational matters, “but it cannot delegate responsibility and must retain overall control” (section 4.3). The scheme of delegation must set out who does what across the trust, including local committees, and how governance roles relate to executive leaders (section 4.3.6).
For safeguarding, that means the trust’s scheme of delegation and safeguarding policy should make clear:
- what the trust lead does, and who they report to
- what local committees (local governing bodies) check, if anything
- what each headteacher and DSL is responsible for in their school
What the role usually involves
Because the role isn’t defined nationally, the job description sets the scope. Common parts of it include:
- writing a trust-wide child protection policy, with a section for each school’s local details
- quality assurance: audits, file reviews and checks on the single central record across schools, often linked to the section 175 safeguarding audit for each local authority
- running a DSL network, training and supervision for DSLs
- advising on complex cases, and on allegations and low-level concerns about staff
- working with several local authorities and safeguarding partnerships where schools sit in different areas
- reporting anonymised data and themes to the trust board and its safeguarding trustee
How the school DSL fits in
The DSL in each academy keeps the lead responsibility for child protection in that school. Annex B of KCSIE says that while activities can be delegated to trained deputies, “the ultimate lead responsibility for child protection … remains with the designated safeguarding lead” and should not be delegated.
In practice:
- Concerns go to the school DSL. Staff report to their school’s DSL or deputy, as Part one of KCSIE sets out. They don’t go round them to the trust.
- The DSL makes referrals to children’s social care, the police or Prevent, using the procedures of the area where the child lives.
- The trust lead supports and checks. They can advise, attend difficult meetings, spot patterns across schools and step in if practice falls short. They don’t take over the DSL’s statutory role.
- The DSL keeps the head informed, and the head and DSL feed into the trust’s reporting.
Trusts should also think about allegations about a headteacher. KCSIE says these go to the chair of governors or, in an independent school, the proprietor, who becomes the case manager (paragraphs 78 and 440). The trust’s own procedure should name who that is in each school. Footnote 31 says that where a school has a sole proprietor, the DSL should be able to act independently, including contacting the LADO directly. That footnote is written about sole proprietors, but the same idea is a useful check in any trust structure. See when to contact the LADO.
Pay and job titles
There is no national pay rate or framework for trust safeguarding roles. They are central trust posts, so pay is set by each trust. Some are on leadership terms and some on support staff grades. Check the job description and the trust’s pay policy, and browse safeguarding jobs.