The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have changed their children’s school just two days into the new school year due to security concerns, according to a BBC report published yesterday.
The couple moved the children to a different institution due to the family’s security team concerns on securing the commute, the report said, given the distance and heavy traffic on the original school run route.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle returned with their children to the UK in August, six years after leaving the country for the US. The names of the schools in question have not been disclosed, according to the report.
The Sussexes haven’t commented since the move, but a video montage posted on Instagram by the Duchess of the family in the English countryside prompted a guessing game among users to work out where they might be based.
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The level of police protection of the couple will also be reviewed, the BBC said, by the committee which oversees royal and VIP security, known as Ravec.
Security advisers told Spear’s they would advise most high-profile or UHNW families against posting in general, due to the risks attached.
‘From my perspective, you just do not put anything on social media. You get out of the limelight as much as possible,’ says David Allison, a former SAS soldier who founded Octaga Security Services in 2001.
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Allison’s firm has provided security for UHNW families, foreign diplomats, and providers of luxury services. He told Spear’s that for UHNWs with families, schooling can present particular challenges – as the Sussexes have discovered.
Some families, Allison said, might choose to enrol their children to a new school under an ‘alias name’, or in the case of a double-barrelled name, keep the first part of a surname.
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Another consideration, he adds, is ensuring the children are dropped off and picked up from school as unobtrusively as possible. This can include the physical size and appearance of the protection officer with them, and the choice of vehicle.
‘It could be a people carrier with privacy glass, but not necessarily a G-Wagon or top of the range Range Rover with all blackout glass,’ he says. ‘It’s all about trying to scale back that attention.’
Families dealing with press interest or paparazzi, as in Harry and Meghan’s case, may need to ask schools to sign NDAs and be acutely aware of security-related risks around the school grounds, Allison says.
‘You would hope that the school staff are perceptive to any third-party reconnaissance. Is there anybody watching the school outside the drop-off and pick-up times? If there is a van, is it a plain, unmarked van? Is it a working van? If it’s a working van, is it working in the area? What business do they have there?’
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Others tell Spear’s that any UHNW person, with or without a family, wanting to hire protection officers, should involve security professionals at the earliest possible stage for the protection to be most effective.
‘Often, security is a secondary thought, rather than there being an assessment made from the outset as to the best sort of plan and procedure needed,’ says Richard Barclay, the founding director of Olorisk, a private security company established in 2018.
Building a successful security plan means taking into account every factor of the client’s particular lifestyle and habits.
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‘When you’re looking at the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and all those sorts of people that have a large team wrapped around them 24/7 because of how in the public eye they are,’ Barclays says.
‘It’s a completely different conversation than it would be for an UHNW family that maybe has a security driver and a personal protection officer with them on a daily basis.’
What’s important for clients, he adds, is to have realistic expectations of what a security team can provide, and to work with them to build a plan that works.
‘If someone hasn’t had security before, their perception of how it works can be based on novels or what they see on television.’
