Martyn's Law for Community Halls: What You Need to Do
TL;DR
Community halls with 200 to 799 people in the building at once, counting hirers, their guests, the committee, keyholders, and any staff and volunteers together, are standard tier under Martyn’s Law. Above 800 it’s enhanced tier instead. Plenty of halls never get near 200, so check that first. The catch for the ones that do is that your procedures have to work for people you’ve never met, so they end up living in the hire agreement, on posters, and in a two-minute keyholder briefing at handover. Below: working out whether you’re in scope, what the four procedures look like in a building that’s rearranged every weekend, and how to show your hirers and volunteers know them.
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What sets halls apart is who’s on site when they fill up. Most venues under the Act have staff on shift: a duty manager, door staff, someone behind the bar. A typical village hall has a volunteer committee, a keyholder, and whoever booked the building that weekend. England has roughly 10,000 village and community halls, mostly run by volunteers, and the people putting on events often aren’t on anyone’s payroll. The law still applies. Meeting it just looks different when most of your people are volunteers rather than employees, and if the hall does employ anyone (bar staff, a cleaner, a caretaker), the procedures need to reach them too, since the Act covers employees, volunteers, and contractors alike.
Most of what it asks for is writing things down and making sure the right people have read them, which a committee that meets four times a year can manage. But keeping it alive is harder, when the committee turns over every couple of years and each weekend’s hirer is new. The rest of this guide walks through how a hall does that, starting with whether you’re in scope at all.
Does Martyn's Law Apply to Community Halls?
Yes. Community Halls fall under Halls etc. (Schedule 1, paragraph 6) of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, which applies once 200 or more people, including staff, volunteers, and contractors, can be expected on site at the same time, even if only occasionally. If your community hall expects between 200 and 799 people at once, it qualifies as a standard tier premises. At 800 or more, you're into enhanced tier instead, which carries a heavier set of duties.
Standard tier means two duties: notify the SIA that you are a qualifying premises, and put public protection procedures in place covering evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, and communication.
No physical alterations. No equipment to buy. No consultants to hire.
How to Work Out Your Community hall Capacity
Your capacity is the greatest number of people reasonably expected in the hall at one time, and plenty of halls never reach 200. If you only tip over 200 for the occasional wedding or dance, those regular peaks are what count. If you never really get near it, you’re out of scope and there’s nothing more to do.
Look at your booking diary, not the biggest night you can remember. One community centre told us its regular weekly bookings mostly stay under 100, while its Friday and weekend events (wedding receptions, shows, birthday parties) run anywhere from 150 to 250, and the odd one reaches 300 or more. In a hall like that, the weekend functions are what set the number, because they come round often. Whether the rarer 300-plus nights count as well depends on how often they happen.
Count everyone in the building, not just guests. A wedding with 170 guests plus 25 caterers, a band, and a few hall volunteers on the door is over 200.
More than one room? Use the figure for when every room is in use at once. Your fire safety occupancy figure is usually the easiest number to start from, or measure the floor area and apply the standard floor space factors.
Not sure where you fall? Use our free capacity calculator to work it out.
Key Challenges for Community Halls
Most Community Halls hit the same handful of problems with Martyn's Law, and they come from how the building works rather than from the Act itself. These are the ones that come up most often:
The people running events aren’t yours
Monday’s yoga teacher, Saturday’s wedding caterer, the committee member who unlocked the door: three different people, none of them your employee. You can’t put hirers through a training course. So the “make sure people know the procedures” part is met a different way: a clause in the hire agreement, posters they can’t miss, and a quick word at handover. The committee or trustees are the responsible person, not the hirer.
Who’s actually in the building during a hire
Halls we’ve spoken to handle this in a few ways, and it changes where the procedures need to live. Some never leave a one-off hirer alone: a committee member or caretaker stays for the whole booking, and keys, door codes and alarm codes only go to the regular weekly groups who know the building as well as the committee does. Some meet every one-off hirer and hand the building over in person, waiting until the organiser arrives if need be. If the hall runs its own bar, its bar staff may well be on site once the guests turn up. Others hand over the keys but write into the hire agreement that the person who signed it has to be the one on site. And some never meet the hirer at all: there’s a key safe on the outside wall, one-off hirers get a code that only works for their booking, some regular groups get a recurring one, and the committee can unlock it remotely. All of these work. With a key safe there’s no handover moment, so the briefing has to travel with the code: send the procedure summary in the same message, and let the posters inside do the rest. If someone of yours is always there, whether that’s a committee member, a caretaker or whoever’s behind the bar, they’re the one who’d start an evacuation or bolt the doors. So it’s their knowledge that matters most, and the hirer briefing is a bonus. If keys change hands, the named-hirer clause is what stops your briefing landing on someone who then isn’t there on the night. What doesn’t work: a stranger turns up late, unloads the car, takes the keys, and nobody’s said a word about the exits.
A volunteer committee that turns over
Most halls are run by a handful of trustees, often the same few people, and most committees struggle to recruit new ones. Whatever you set up has to survive people leaving, so it needs writing down rather than living in one keyholder’s head. Pick two or three people who know the procedures and can brief a hirer, and keep the written version where the next committee will find it.
Layouts that change every booking
Tables, chairs, and staging move for every event, and exit routes get blocked by a buffet table or the edge of a stage. One line in your hire terms fixes most of it: fire exits and escape routes must stay clear at all times. Mark the routes on the floor if you can. If you already put up floor plans showing the fire exits, hang the procedure poster next to each one.
Hirers who already lock themselves in
Some halls already tell hirers to lock the main doors once everyone’s inside. One centre told us it started doing so after trouble with antisocial behaviour outside. That habit is half a lockdown procedure already, because the hirer knows where the locks are and how they work. The other half is getting out again. A lockdown has to be reversible, so the fire exits must still open from inside, and whoever locked up needs to know how to unlock quickly if the group has to leave.
One building, very different events
A toddler group and a 200-person Saturday night function aren’t the same risk. Your core procedures don’t change, but for the big bookings you might add a couple of exit marshals, name someone to start a lockdown, and give the organiser a proper briefing rather than a leaflet.
Worked Example: Community hall Procedures
A village hall with a main hall, a smaller meeting room, a kitchen, a store room, and a car park. Capacity 250. Run by a volunteer committee. Hired out for weddings, parties, classes, and meetings.
| Procedure | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 250 (fire safety occupancy) |
| Evacuation | Main entrance to the car park; rear fire exit from the main hall to the playing field; meeting room fire exit to the side path; kitchen door to the rear yard. Signs already in place. The hire agreement makes the hirer responsible for keeping routes clear. |
| Invacuation | Main hall away from the windows if the threat is outside; meeting room (smaller, lockable interior door); store room (no windows, lockable). Anyone out in the car park or on the field brought inside. |
| Lockdown | Main double doors bolted top and bottom; rear and meeting-room fire exits barred from inside; kitchen door key-locked (key in the labelled drawer); lights off in the main hall. Keyholder or hirer does it. |
| Communication | The organiser or hirer raises the alarm and gives instructions. Procedure poster by the main entrance and in the kitchen, so every hirer sees it. Phone in the kitchen for 999. For bigger events the organiser has a way to address the room: a microphone or PA. Keyholder’s mobile number on the poster. |
| Training | Committee briefed each year at the AGM, and that’s minuted. A procedure summary goes in every hire agreement. Laminated posters at the entrance, in the kitchen, and in the meeting room. For events over 100, the keyholder spends two minutes at handover walking the organiser through the exits, the phone, and what to do. The minutes, signed hire agreements, and posters are the evidence an inspector would want. |
This is one example. Your procedures should reflect your specific building, layout, and circumstances. Read our full guide to public protection procedures for a detailed breakdown of what to include. To see how procedures like these come together on paper, read our complete example document for a 300-capacity pub.
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Hirers aren’t employees, so you can’t make them sit a course. What you can do is put a short procedure summary in every hire agreement, posters where nobody can miss them, and a quick verbal briefing when you hand over the keys. That combination is a reasonable way to meet the duty to communicate the procedures.
For regular hirers, the weekly yoga class or the monthly craft group, one briefing when they first start is enough. They’ll see the posters every week after that. If they hold their own keys or door codes, they’re also the ones who’d lock the building down with nobody from the committee there, so that first briefing needs to cover the doors as well as the exits. When a regular group stops booking, get the keys back or change the codes.
The bit people forget is proof. Standard tier isn’t just having procedures, it’s being able to show the people running events know them. Keep it simple: minute the committee briefing in your AGM notes, keep signed hire agreements with the procedure summary attached, and note when you last refreshed the posters. That’s your evidence if the SIA ever asks.
The free ACT Awareness e-learning (45 minutes) is a good baseline for anyone who wants to go further. It covers recognising threats, suspicious items, and what to do during an attack.
Quick Checklist
- Check whether you can expect 200 or more people in at once, even if only for a few events a year. If not, you’re likely out of scope
- Work out your busiest-event capacity: attendees plus caterers, performers, and volunteers
- Map every exit, including fire exits, the kitchen door, and the store room
- List each entry point and how it locks: main doors, side doors, fire exits, kitchen
- Write the four procedures so they work whether your people or a hirer is running the event
- Put a procedure summary in every hire agreement and brief hirers at handover, or send it with the door code if you use a key safe
- Decide whether one of your people stays for one-off hires, or whether the person who signed the agreement must be the one on site, and put it in the hire terms
- Put posters where everyone sees them: entrance, kitchen, noticeboard
- Keep the proof: AGM minutes, signed hire agreements, poster review dates
Getting Started
Compliance is not complicated. Here is what to do:
- Work out your capacity (try our free calculator). Under 200? You are not in scope.
- Check who the responsible person is. It's usually whoever runs the community hall, which isn't always the owner, and both duties fall to them.
- Write procedures for evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, and communication tailored to your community hall.
- Make sure your staff and volunteers know the procedures. Brief them, put up posters, hand out one-page summaries. If volunteers help out, read how Martyn's Law treats volunteers.
- Keep records of what you have done and who has been briefed.
- Notify the SIA once the duty starts. You can't yet: our guide to notifying the SIA explains how it'll work, and the Martyn's Law timeline tracks when the duties are expected to begin.
- Review at least once a year.
You can do this yourself, or use Standard Tier to document your procedures in 10 minutes, set up a training portal your staff and volunteers can access on their phones whenever it suits them, and keep a digital audit trail without chasing signatures or filing paperwork.
30-day free trial · No card required · £18/month (usually £38), unlimited staff and volunteers after that
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Martyn’s Law apply to our hall right now?
Who is responsible, the committee or the hirer?
Our hall also runs a café. Does that change who’s responsible?
We only top 200 for weddings and big events. Are we in scope?
Do we have to train everyone who hires the hall?
Does someone from the committee have to be on site for every booking?
Our hall is listed with only two exits. Is that a problem?
Official Sources
What's changed recently
- Martyn's Law: new rules for buildings with more than one use (8 September 2026)
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Standard Tier (2026). Martyn's Law for Community Halls: What You Need to Do. Available at: https://www.standardtier.co.uk/guide/martyns-law-for-community-halls
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026. Based on the Act, the Home Office statutory guidance published on 15 April 2026, and the Home Office factsheets. Requirements may be refined as the SIA finalises its guidance.
This guide is general information about the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, not legal advice. Duties under the Act rest on the responsible person for each venue and cannot be transferred. If you're unsure how a specific requirement applies to your premises, take advice from a solicitor or qualified security adviser before acting on anything you read here.
Standard Tier is an independent platform and is not affiliated with the UK Home Office, the SIA, or any government body.