Free, complete, nothing held back

How to meet the standard-tier duties without paying anyone.

You do not need to buy anything to comply with Martyn's Law. The Home Office and the SIA say so, and we agree. This is the whole thing: the test, the notification, and what belongs in each of the four procedures. If it does the job, use it and keep your money.

Check if it applies to you first

Are you in scope?

The test is whether it is reasonable to expect 200 or more people present at the same time, from time to time, in premises used for one of the purposes the Act lists. Shops, pubs and restaurants, entertainment and leisure, sports grounds, hotels, visitor attractions, health care, places of worship, childcare and education, libraries and museums, and halls and community centres are all in.

Two things trip people up, and both push the number up rather than down.

Count everyone, not just customers. Staff, volunteers, contractors, performers and anyone hired in all count. The Home Office’s own worked example is a venue with a customer capacity of 750 and 60 staff at peak. That is 810 people present, which is enhanced tier rather than standard.
Count your busiest realistic day. Not an average week. A church at 80 most Sundays that holds a 300-person funeral has to think about the funeral.

Between 200 and 799 is standard tier. From 800 it is enhanced tier, which is a much larger piece of work. There is one important exception: places of worship and childcare, school, college and further education settings enter standard tier at 200 and stay there, however many people are present. A cathedral with 2,000 at Christmas is still standard tier.

Whatever figure you land on, assess it on a basis you can justify and write down how you got there. A fire safety safe-occupancy figure or attendance records from past events are both accepted starting points. The figure matters less than being able to explain it.

Telling the SIA

If you are in scope you have to notify the Security Industry Authority, which is the regulator for this. You will need to say who you are, where the premises are, what they are used for and who is responsible.

You cannot do this yet. The notification portal is not live. The SIA has confirmed it is expected to open around spring 2027 and that you will not be able to notify until then. Once the Act commences you will have three months to notify, and events have 14 days from being publicised.

Two things worth knowing. Commencement in spring 2027 is consistently signalled but subject to Parliamentary confirmation, so treat it as expected rather than fixed. And you can ask someone else to fill in the form, but you cannot hand over the legal responsibility for it. It stays with the responsible person for the premises.

The four procedures

This is the whole of the standard-tier duty. Four public protection procedures, in place so far as is reasonably practicable, that people could actually carry out quickly. No cameras, no barriers, no vulnerability assessment. Those belong to enhanced tier.

Below is what each one needs to answer. Work through the questions for your building and you have written the procedure. Print this page and you have a blank template to fill in by hand, which is a perfectly respectable way to do it.

Evacuation

Getting people away from danger by moving them out.

Which exits do you use, and where does each one lead? You need routes that lead to genuinely different places, so that one being unsafe does not strand everyone.
Where do people gather once outside, and is that spot away from the likely threat rather than next to it?
Who decides to evacuate, and who takes over if that person is not there?
How will you help anyone who cannot use stairs or move quickly?
How does everyone learn where the danger is, so they move away from it rather than towards it?

Invacuation

Moving people to somewhere safer inside the building.

Which rooms or areas are safer? Think solid walls, few windows, a door that closes.
How do you bring people in from outside, if it is safe to do so?
Who decides, and how do staff know this is invacuation rather than a fire evacuation? It needs a different signal, because the fire alarm would send people the wrong way.
How long could people stay there, and what would they need?
Who gives the all-clear, and how?

Lockdown

Securing the premises so people cannot enter or leave.

Who calls a lockdown, and how do the people who have to act on it find out?
Which doors, gates, shutters and windows need securing, and who does each one?
Which rooms lock quickly, and where are the keys or fobs at the moment you need them?
How are people told to stay put, including anyone in a toilet, a store room or outside?
When would locking down make things worse? Write that down too. It is not always the right answer.

Communication

Telling staff and the public what is happening and what to do.

Who speaks to staff, who speaks to the public, and who speaks to the emergency services?
What are you actually using? A PA, radios, a staff WhatsApp group, or someone walking round telling people.
What do they say? Write the words now. Nobody composes a clear instruction while frightened.
How do you reach people who cannot hear an announcement, or who do not speak English well?
Where will you meet the emergency services when they arrive?

Two more things the guidance suggests, both worth doing and neither of them legally required at standard tier. Keep a grab bag somewhere accessible with emergency contacts, a staff list and a floor plan in it. And if your premises is sometimes unstaffed, put the procedures on a poster where people will see them.

Then brief everyone. A procedure nobody has been told about is not in place. Talk it through, walk the routes, and note down who was there.

Free training

All of this is free, official, and better than anything a vendor will sell you.

ACT Awareness eLearning, the national counter terrorism awareness course, on ProtectUK. About 45 minutes, and the obvious starting point for anyone who works or volunteers at your premises.
SCaN, See Check and Notify, also on ProtectUK. Aimed at people on a front desk or a door.
Run Hide Tell from NaCTSO, which is the short public-facing advice worth sharing with volunteers and, in a school, with older pupils.

Free templates from people who know your sector

Before you write anything from scratch, check whether your own national body has already done it. They usually have, it is usually free, and it is usually better tuned to your building than a generic form.

Churches: your diocese or denominational office. The Church of England’s ChurchCare, the Methodist Church’s property support team and the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance all publish guidance.
Village halls: your county village hall association, through ACRE, and NALC for parish and town councils.
Schools: your local authority or trust almost certainly has a lockdown procedure already. Martyn’s Law overlaps heavily with what safeguarding has you doing.
Leisure: Community Leisure UK and ukactive.
Everyone: the section 27 statutory guidance itself, on GOV.UK. It is more readable than you would expect.

Do you have to write any of this down?

No. At standard tier there is no legal duty to document your procedures. That duty applies to enhanced tier. The guidance describes documentation as good practice, a should rather than a must, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Records are still worth keeping, for a reason that has nothing to do with the law. If the SIA asks what your procedures are, or a hall committee changes hands, or the person who knew all this leaves, the answer needs to exist somewhere other than in one person’s head. Volunteer turnover undoes more of this work than anything else.

You can do that in a folder and a spreadsheet, and plenty of places will. Muster exists for the ones who would rather not, and particularly for organisations holding twenty or two hundred sites where a folder per site stops being workable. That is the only thing we are selling, and this guide works whether or not you buy it.

Not sure whether any of this applies to you?

Six questions, a cited answer, and a result you can print and take to your committee. Free, and no account needed.

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