Does Martyn's Law Apply to My Venue?

When Does Martyn's Law Apply?

Section 2 of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 sets four conditions. All four have to be true at once, or the Act doesn't reach the premises at all.

1. The premises are physical, not just land. They “consist of a building or a building and other land.” Open ground with nothing built on it isn't qualifying premises. A large ticketed event held on that ground is a separate question, and we come back to it below.
2. The main use fits Schedule 1. The premises are “wholly or mainly used for one or more uses specified in Schedule 1” of the Act, which covers 17 categories from shops to sports grounds.
3. The numbers clear 200. It's “reasonable to expect that from time to time 200 or more individuals may be present on the premises at the same time in connection with one or more uses specified in Schedule 1.” Staff and volunteers count towards that figure, not just visitors.
4. Nothing excludes it. The premises are “not specified or described in Part 1 of Schedule 2” of the Act, which rules out a short list of premises Parliament decided didn't need this Act on top of what already covers them.

The 17 Schedule 1 Uses

Every qualifying use in the Act falls under one of these 17 paragraphs. Find the closest match for your venue, then check it against the capacity band above.

What's Excluded, Even If You Meet the Other Three Conditions?

Schedule 2, Part 1 rules out four groups of premises, mostly because something else already covers the security angle.

• Parliament (paragraph 1).
• The devolved legislatures and governments (paragraph 2): the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Administration, Senedd Cymru and the Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Assembly and Northern Ireland departments.
• Freely open parks, gardens and recreation grounds (paragraph 3): where there's no way of securing or checking that visitors have paid, hold a ticket or pass, or are a member or guest of a club. Add any of those controls and the exclusion no longer applies.
• Transport premises already regulated elsewhere (paragraph 4): aerodromes with a security plan under the Aviation Security Act 1982, stations covered by a security instruction under the Railways Act 1993, and premises under the Channel Tunnel (Security) Order 1994, EC Regulation 725/2004, or the Port Security Regulations 2009.

Bus and coach stations aren't on that list. Nothing in paragraph 4 reaches them, so a bus or coach station with 200 or more people is assessed the same as anywhere else, under Schedule 1, paragraph 11.

The Four Categories That Are Always Standard Tier

Four uses in Schedule 1 stay standard tier no matter how big they get: places of worship (paragraph 9), childcare (paragraph 13), primary and secondary education (paragraph 14), and further education (paragraph 15). A cathedral expecting 3,000 people at a service is standard tier, not enhanced.

But higher education didn't make that list. A university or other higher education institution (paragraph 16) follows the normal rule: 200 to 799 is standard tier, 800 or more is enhanced.

Charging for entry, selling tickets or requiring membership doesn't change whether your premises qualify, or which tier they sit in. Paragraph 18 of Schedule 1 says payment, tickets, passes and club membership are irrelevant to both questions. That's the day-to-day assessment, though. A one-off event with its own ticket or payment control is judged separately under section 3, and can carry duties of its own even at a venue that's otherwise out of scope. The four categories above are the one exception: Schedule 2 rules them out of that route entirely, however large the event.

A Large One-Off Event Can Bring Its Own Duties

Everything above is about how your premises operate day to day. Section 3 of the Act adds a separate route in: a qualifying event.

An event qualifies when you're expecting 800 or more people, the public can attend, and entry is controlled by a ticket, a booking, a payment or a membership check, at premises that aren't already enhanced tier. Meet those conditions and the event carries enhanced-tier-style duties of its own, for that event, not for the building generally.

This route reaches further than the day-to-day rules. It can apply to premises that are otherwise out of scope, including open land with no building at all. A one-off festival or a large outdoor wedding on a site that wouldn't otherwise qualify isn't automatically in the clear.

Four categories are the exception: places of worship, nurseries and other childcare settings, schools, and further education colleges can never be caught this way, whatever the event. Schedule 2 rules qualifying-event status out for them entirely.

Read our qualifying events guide for the detail.

What Happens If You're in Scope?

Standard tier comes down to two duties under the Act, and neither one asks you to buy anything.

Notify the SIA. Section 9 requires the responsible person to tell the Security Industry Authority when they become responsible for qualifying premises, stop being responsible, or when something they've already told the SIA stops being accurate. For most standard tier venues the headline window is three months from when the duty starts, though the exact deadline depends on which of those three triggers applies.

Put public protection procedures in place. Section 5 requires the responsible person to make sure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that there are procedures covering four things: evacuation (getting people out safely), invacuation (moving people to safer parts of the premises), lockdown (stopping people getting in or out), and communication (telling everyone on site what's happening).

That's it. Standard tier doesn't require physical alterations, new equipment, a mandatory training course, a written procedures document handed to the SIA, or a named senior individual responsible for security. Those come with enhanced tier, not this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Official Sources

• Full text of the Act
• Schedule 1: qualifying premises and specified uses
• Home Office factsheet: scope (premises)
• Supplementary Document B: scope illustrative examples
• ProtectUK Martyn's Law hub