Most families do not have a security problem. They have five, and no one holding them together.
A house in London, one in the country, a driver, an agency housekeeper, three children at two schools and a principal who travels. Each arrangement is sensible on its own. The gaps are all in the joins.
What a programme covers
One standard applied across everything the family touches, rather than a different supplier for each part:
- A survey of every residence, held as one picture rather than five separate reports
- Household staff vetting to BS 7858 — and a joining and leaving procedure that survives turnover
- Written procedures: deliveries, contractors, unexpected callers, medical and fire
- Travel: advance work, drivers and cover for each principal and dependent, at home and abroad
- Information exposure — filings, planning applications, school runs and social media
- An annual review, because the risk changes when the family's circumstances do
Working with the advisers you already have
A family office usually already has lawyers, a wealth manager, an insurance broker and often a private-client accountant. We are not a replacement for any of them, and we do not need to be in every conversation. What is generally missing is a single person who owns the security picture across all of it — who knows which house has which alarm contract, which member of staff has been vetted and when, and who answers the phone at two in the morning.
We work to the office’s reporting rhythm rather than our own: a written annual review, a short quarterly note, and a named contact who does not change every quarter.
Staff, and the joins
Most household incidents involve access rather than force, and access is a staffing question: who holds keys and codes, what happens on the day someone leaves, how an agency covers a housekeeper’s absence at short notice, whether a contractor working in an empty wing was ever checked. Vetting to BS 7858 is the baseline; the procedure around it is what actually holds.
The commonest finding in a family programme is not a weakness in any one house. It is that nobody had ever compared them.
Proportionate by design
A programme does not mean officers everywhere. For most families it means good surveys, sound procedures, vetted staff and protection bought only for the occasions that genuinely warrant it — a period of attention, a public event, a difficult transition. If the honest answer is that you need less than you were expecting, that is what the review will say.
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