Welcome to the S175 Safeguarding Self-Assessment tool from Lancashire School Safeguarding Service and the Lancashire Safeguarding Business Unit.
This tool supports education settings to assess themselves against the safeguarding requirements expected of them according to legislation.
Role and responsibilities:
Education settings: To complete the self assessment and use the completed assessment to produce an action plan to improve safeguarding activity in their setting.
Lancashire County Council (including School Safeguarding Team): To support in the analysis of the completed S175 returns and to support any schools who are at risk of not fulfilling their safeguarding obligations.
CSAP Business Unit: To manage the survey, collect the returns and support analysis of the S175 returns.
CSAP Education Subgroup: To support the planning of actions from the analysis of the S175 returns, monitor progress of the actions from the plan and report progress back to CSAP Board/Safeguarding Effectiveness Group(SEG).
Please complete this tool in full.
If you have any questions or queries please contact school.safeguarding@lancashire.gov.uk or LSBU@lancashire.gov.uk.
Suggested guidance on how to complete the self-assessment:
- Print the support document and the draft document to share with appropriate members of school staff to gain their views. We advise sharing this with the senior leadership team, DSLs and Governors/Trustees.
- Set up a series of meetings with senior leaders, DSLs, governors/trustees to go through the document as early as possible. These meetings could be divided into one meeting per section of the document. It would be beneficial for the group to have completed their individual assessment of where they think your setting is graded for each question.
- Use the meetings to talk through each question and grade yourselves as a school team. Each question has an option for Met, Partially Met and Not Met, with some questions including a N/A option. Using the supporting document to decide which option is applicable for your school. If you assess your setting as in between the criteria for Met and Not Met you should choose Partially Met. If you are unsure of any answers as a team, use this time to plan how you will gain assurance e.g. staff surveys, looking through evidence.
- If applicable use the action planning section under each question to outline how you will meet the criteria under the met category within the academic year.
- Populate the action planning template with your actions and continue to monitor your own actions throughout the year. This can also be used as evidence for inspections.
- Once completed, you must complete the online version of the survey using this link : https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/G8PRNC/. Word copies or PDFs will not be analysed.
- Once submitted, a copy of the survey will be sent to the email address you supplied in the survey and to the safeguarding education team.
If you need further support please contact the LSBU@lancashire.gov.uk in the first instance.
Please submit your self assessment by COP Friday 30th October 2026.