The Security Industry Authority has set out more detail on how Martyn's Law, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, will work in practice. In an update published on 11 September and written by Laura Gibb, the SIA's Executive Director for Martyn's Law, the regulator describes an online scope tool to help premises work out whether they are covered, which it says will be available to use in the new year. Template documents for standard and enhanced tier premises will be published over the coming months, with no requirement to use them, and helpful flowcharts are already available on Protect UK. A notifications portal, accessible through GOV.UK and designed to work for organisations of any scale, is in build, and the SIA is seeking volunteers to help build and test it. A second round of pilots begins this autumn.
Under the Act, premises where between 200 and 799 people may be present at the same time fall into the standard tier, and larger premises where 800 or more individuals may be present fall into the enhanced tier. The SIA is the regulator, with responsibility for helping those in scope comply, running desk-based assessments and on-site inspections, and bringing premises and events into compliance. The Act is expected to come into force in spring 2027.
For operators and venue clients: the work to do now is mapping which sites and events fall into which tier and drafting the procedures each tier will require, well ahead of spring 2027. Providers advising venues can use the Protect UK flowcharts today and the SIA scope tool once it lands, and should watch for the notifications portal and the template documents as they publish.
