How to prepare for Martyn’s Law without panic or wasted spending

Weeks 1–2: settle scope before buying anything

Count the greatest number reasonably expected at the same time, from time to time. Include workers, volunteers, contractors and performers—not only visitors or ticketed customers. Record the occasion behind the figure, such as a school play, funeral, wedding or Christmas service.

Check that the premises is mainly used for a purpose covered by Schedule 1 and identify who controls it for that use. Shared buildings and hired halls may require several parties to coordinate. An uncertain answer is better recorded as uncertain than forced into a convenient tier.

Weeks 3–6: write the four procedures

Start with existing fire, safeguarding, major incident and business-continuity material. Keep what is true. Add the terrorism-specific decisions: when the normal fire exit or assembly point may be unsafe, where people could move inside, how doors can be secured, and how instructions reach the public.

• Evacuation: routes away from a changing threat, not only a fixed fire assembly point.
• Invacuation: safer places inside and how people reach them.
• Lockdown: who decides, what can actually be secured and how release is controlled.
• Communication: distinct alerts, accessible instructions, 999 information and responsibility.

Weeks 7–10: brief and practise

A procedure succeeds through people, not page count. Brief staff and volunteers in language they will remember. Give people with specific roles enough detail to act. A twenty-minute walk-through often finds more than a polished document review: a key nobody carries, a door that opens the wrong way, or an assembly point beside the likely danger.

Weeks 11–12: record, review and stop

Record which version was approved, who was briefed, what the exercise found and when you will review it. Then stop inventing work. Standard tier is intended to be proportionate; it is not an invitation to copy enhanced-tier risk assessments or buy equipment the premises does not need.