Westminster School - Legal, Risk and Governance Officer

Summary

We are currently seeking to fill the position of Legal, Risk and Governance Officer.

Detail

Required for: as soon as possible

Location: Dean’s Yard, Westminster School

Contract: Full-time, permanent

Hours of work: 09:00 - 17:00, Monday to Friday with an hour unpaid lunchbreak. The role is required to be onsite, though there is flexibility to work from home during the school holidays

Salary: £35,000 - £37,000 depending on experience

Benefits of working at Westminster include:

• Generous School pension scheme
• Free access to the School’s leisure facilities, including a fitness gym (restricted hours)
• Cycle to Work Scheme and season ticket loans following completion of our standard probation period
• Private medical insurance (opt in)
• Discretionary Christmas shutdown period
• Professional development opportunities 
  

Free school meals are also available when on-site during working hours for the role.

The closing date for this role is midday on Wednesday 22nd September 2026. Interviews will take place in-person shortly after the closing date.

Westminster School is seeking an astute and detail-orientated Legal, Risk & Governance Officer to provide essential administrative and operational support to the Head of Legal, Risk and Assurance (HLRA) and the Clerk to the Governing Body (GB).

This role supports with ensuring effective management of legal compliance, risk frameworks, governance processes, and insurance matters, contributing to the School’s overall assurance and regulatory obligations.

Reporting to the HLRA, the role involves maintaining a number of databases, monitoring compliance deadlines, and supporting various legal functions. In risk management, the role helps to maintain the central Risk Register, liaise with risk owners, track mitigation actions, and support internal audits and business continuity planning.

The role also includes coordinating insurance renewals and claims, ensuring compliance with policy requirements, and assisting with data protection duties such as responding to subject access requests, maintaining breach logs, and reviewing data protection documents such as DPIAs and LIAs.

Additionally, this role supports the governance function of the School by assisting the Clerk to the GB with scheduling and administering Governing Body and Committee meetings, managing governor records, and facilitating governor inductions, events, and cyclical visits.

This role may be of benefit to a recent graduate looking to gain legal and/or compliance experience, though this is not essential. The successful applicant is expected to be highly organised with a willingness to learn. They will be expected to develop and improve stakeholder relationships, particularly with the Governing Body and Senior Management. A high degree of professionalism is therefore required.

Key Responsibilities 

Support to the Head of Legal, Risk and Assurance (HLRA) 

Legal

• Maintaining the contracts, and properties databases as well as filing relevant correspondence; 
• Using the contracts database, provide reports on material contracts; 
• Monitoring compliance with key dates, including statutory deadlines, contract and policy renewals etc. to ensure HLRA is aware of the need to review in good time; 
• Assisting with initial drafts of documents such as leases, licences, loan agreements, debt letters and policies;
• Assisting with all legal compliance and other tasks to support the legal and compliance function, as required, including research tasks, securing Governor availability to sign legal documents, and assisting with the signing process. 

Risk Management 

Supporting the HLRA with: 

• Maintaining the central Risk Register and associated assurance framework; 
• Liaising with risk owners to help them develop and maintain their departmental risk registers; 
• Implementing and reviewing of mitigation actions; 
• Reviewing around risk scoring and risk appetite; 
• Reporting on organisational risks to the leadership teams and Governors; 
• Developing a rolling schedule of auditing School, fundraising, commercial and operational procedures, practices, and documents to identify possible weaknesses;
• Legislative and policy compliance, including monitoring changes in legislation that may impact the School; 
• Providing administration around internal audits conducted, reviewing findings with the leaders of the areas being reviewed and monitoring completion of action plans to address the findings;
• Assisting the HLRA with the Business Continuity framework, liaising with other teams to help ensure effective plans are in place to manage a crisis or compliance violation and to ensure appropriate improvement activity is identified;
• Assisting the development of an Incident Management and reporting framework. 

Insurance

Assisting the HLRA with: 

• The annual insurance renewal process; 
• Providing administration of ongoing insurance matters and claims, liaising with relevant staff, our broker and insurers;
• Liaising with staff to help ensure compliance with insurance requirements; 
• Co-ordinating with external insurance partners as required. 

Data Protection 

Assisting the HLRA with data protection matters including: 

• Responding to data subject right requests, including Subject Access, Erasure etc; 
• Maintaining the data breach and Subject Access Request log; 
• Leading on data protection impact assessments (DPIAs), legitimate interest assessments (LIAs) and maintaining the associated logs;
• Responding to data protection queries, liaising with the external Data Protection Officer (DPO) as required;
• Helping to establish and maintain a comprehensive asset register and risk maturity framework; 
• Assisting with ongoing legislative compliance and updates to internal policies and notices; 
• Ensuring that staff and Governors receive data protection training on a rolling schedule, in liaison with the external DPO.  

Other tasks 

• Providing administrative support on UKVI matters, as required; 
• Maintaining a log of the School’s intellectual property (IP) and licenses, e.g. music licenses;
• Assisting with the review of policies under HLRA ownership, including assisting with review reminders of policies under the Bursar & COO ownership;
• Supporting the preparation of reports for submission to the Audit, Risk and Compliance committee that fall under the HLRA;
• Providing diary management for the HLRA, arranging and administrating meetings internal and external; 
• Any other assistance as the HLRA may reasonably require. 

Support to Clerk to the Governing Body (GB)  

Providing administrative support for Board Committee and GB Meetings, including:  

• Preparing, updating and issuing the annual meetings calendar; 
• Issuing termly calendar invites for relevant meetings; 
• Arranging logistics for these meetings (e.g. venue, IT and catering); 
• Collating and circulating papers on the governors’ portal, Board Intelligence (BI); 
• Supporting the Clerk on the day of the meeting. 

Arranging other meetings involving governors as required, including: 

• Ad-hoc meetings including governor panels;
• New governor induction and visits;
• Governor and Chair’s dinners. 

Other responsibilities as required, including:

• Supporting the Clerk in the maintenance of governor records, working with HR to ensure compliance;
• Keeping governors informed of School events and handling bookings, working with the school booking team and system; 
• Daily diary management – arranging and administrating meetings internal and external;
• Supporting with the annual SORP declarations process;
• Any other assistance as the Clerk may reasonably require.

Hours of work

09:00 – 17:00, Monday to Friday with an hour unpaid lunchbreak. Start and end times can be flexible and can be discussed at interview.

For this role, we can only accept candidates who already hold the legal right to work in the UK and if successful will need to provide evidence at interview. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer sponsorships for international applicants, or candidates currently working in the UK on a sponsored visa as we are unable to assist with renewal upon expiry.

Equal Opportunities

We are an equal opportunities employer. We therefore encourage candidates to apply irrespective of age, disability, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion and belief, gender identity, sex or sexual orientation.

Safeguarding and Child Protection

Westminster School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. Applicants must be willing to undergo child protection screening appropriate to the post, including checks with past employers and the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Working at Westminster

Westminster School is a busy, purposeful and vibrant place to be and an excellent workplace. The community is made up of around 750 pupils, 120 teaching staff and 108 support staff.

Our staff are friendly and welcoming, and all newcomers quickly become part of the rhythm of life here.

There is a real sense of community here as, being a boarding school many members of staff and pupils live on site and the School’s premises are very much treated as a home away from home. School life starts before breakfast and continues way beyond the working day; as a result, there is always a lively atmosphere in and around School and always someone to share a tea and biscuit with in the Common Room. Support staff as much as teaching staff are encouraged to embrace the School’s day-to-day activities, whether that be attending an evening concert or a morning service in the Abbey.

At Westminster we will always select the best candidate for every position. We do know, however, that we can only truly choose the best person on every occasion if a broad and diverse pool of candidates see the job advertised and are encouraged to apply.

As such, we continue to work on how our job roles are encountered, and particularly welcome applications from groups who have traditionally been underrepresented here.

Westminster School is for everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic. We hope you are encouraged to apply.

The School

Westminster School is an independent day and boarding school for boys aged 13-18 and girls aged 16-18, with a long history, a distinctive ethos, and a unique sense of place in the very heart of London. Pupils achieve exceptional examination results and entrance to some of the top universities in the world. It is a busy, passionate and purposeful place where independent and deep thinking is enjoyed, encouraged and respected by all, and where holistic excellence is nurtured and valued.

While the School is one of the foremost centres of academic excellence in the country, its commitment to academic life does not make it a hothouse for passing examinations. Pupils’ success at examinations and entry to leading universities is instead a result of their enjoyment of academic enquiry, debate and search for explanation, well beyond published syllabuses. Pupils are intellectually, socially, ethically and politically engaged and our aim is to ensure that their enthusiasm for learning is developed further, allowing them to take full advantage of the opportunities presented to them in the future. At Westminster, pupils have the freedom to lead on projects outside of the classroom and embrace a whole range of extra-curricular activities and interests. A host of pupil-led societies take place every week at the School, often with expert guest speakers, and pupils can choose to study an additional language, play an instrument or two, volunteer in local primary schools, row along the Thames, take part in plays and musicals, and much more. 

The School’s ethos resides in the enduring values of the liberal tradition reflected in the 1560 Charter of Westminster’s Elizabethan foundation, where it is stated that: ‘the youth which is growing to manhood, as tender shoots in the wood of our state, shall be liberally instructed in good books to the greater honour of the state’. Whilst academic and cultural attainments are highly prized at Westminster, the School is fully committed also to each pupil’s spiritual, moral, emotional and physical development and wellbeing – with a particular emphasis on drawing out individual talent wherever it lies – and to prepare young people for fulfilled private and public lives.

From September 2028, the School will welcome both girls and boys at 13+ entry, offering a Westminster education to all. By 2026, Westminster Under School will have opened its brand new pre-prep for girls and boys at 4+ and girls will have joined boys in Years 3 and 7, at the 7+ and 11+ entry points. By 2030, all year groups at Westminster School and Westminster Under School, from ages four to 18, will be fully co-educational, reflecting the School’s dedication to inclusivity and excellence.

Documents

• Legal, Risk and Governance Officer - person specification PDF Document