The accession of new senior leaders and middle leaders are significant events and may bring a desired continuity of current improvement efforts, or herald a new direction for the school. Although attention has been paid to building leadership capacity in schools, perhaps via the distribution of leadership, little attention has been paid to leadership succession as a mechanism directly impacting on school improvement, via the supply of talented individuals capable of acting strategically, given the position of the school on its own improvement journey. As part of a study to explore leadership talent identification, development, succession, and retention in schools, the perceptions of twelve heads and twelve middle leaders from contextually different urban primary schools in the English West Midlands were sought. This article reports exclusively on findings with respect to leadership succession and succession planning in these schools.