Martyn’s Law for Exhibition Venues: What You Need to Do
TL;DR
Exhibition venues and conference centres with 200 to 799 people on site (visitors, exhibitors, organiser staff, your team) fall under Martyn’s Law standard tier. Above 800 you’re into enhanced tier instead. Your floor plan changes every event, but your core procedures don’t. Big open halls are hard to use for invacuation; back-of-house areas are usually your best shelter. If you run a registration system, it gives you a real-time headcount most venues would envy. Below: capacity counting, key challenges, and a worked example.
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If your exhibition venue or conference centre regularly has between 200 and 799 people present at the same time (visitors, exhibitors, organiser staff, and your own team combined), it falls under the standard tier of Martyn’s Law. Above 800 you’re into enhanced tier instead, which carries a heavier set of duties beyond the scope of this guide. Standard tier needs public protection procedures for evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, and communication.
Exhibition venues share some challenges with community halls (changing events, different hirers) but at a bigger scale. Your floor plan changes with every show. The exhibitors setting up stands aren’t your employees. The event organiser this week is different from last week. And your big open halls, designed to be flexible and column-free, are some of the hardest spaces to use for invacuation. The flip side is that most exhibition venues run a registration system, which gives you something most venues lack: a way to know roughly who is in the building at any given moment.
Does Martyn's Law Apply to Exhibition Venues?
Exhibition Venues fall under Halls etc. (Schedule 1, paragraph 6) of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. If your exhibition venue regularly has between 200 and 799 people present at the same time, 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 Exhibition venue Capacity
Count everyone on site at the same time: visitors, exhibitors manning stands, event organiser staff, your own venue staff, caterers, contractors, and anyone else present. If you have a registration system, badge scans give you the most accurate real-time count. If you issue separate badges for visitors, exhibitors, and staff, you already have the data.
Capacity varies by event. A densely packed consumer show (wedding fair, craft market) puts more people per square metre than a B2B trade show with large exhibition stands and wide aisles. Set a maximum for each hall based on fire safety occupancy, and enforce it through your registration system.
Build-up and breakdown days have a different profile. Fewer people overall, but loading bays are open, vehicles are entering, and access control is looser. If build-up day regularly brings 200 or more people on site, those days count too.
Not sure where you fall? Use our free capacity calculator to work it out.
Key Challenges for Exhibition Venues
Every exhibition venue is different, but these are the issues that come up most often:
Floor plans that change every event
Every exhibition has a different layout. Stands, staging, demo areas, and registration desks all move. Exit routes can be partially obscured by exhibition structures. Your fire exits don’t move, but the path to reach them does. Verify that exit routes are clear after each build and before doors open. This should be part of your standard sign-off process before every event.
Three groups of people, one building
You have venue staff who know the building, exhibitors who arrived yesterday and set up a stand, and visitors who walked in an hour ago. Each group has a different level of familiarity with the exits and layout. Your procedures need to reach all three. Venue staff get trained. Exhibitors get a briefing note in the exhibitor manual. Visitors rely on PA announcements and signage.
Open halls with few internal walls
Exhibition halls are big, open boxes. That’s what makes them useful, but it also makes invacuation difficult. There are few solid interior walls to shelter behind. Your best options are back-of-house areas: meeting rooms, offices, loading bay corridors (with roller shutters closed), and catering prep areas. Identify these spaces and make sure your staff know where they are.
Coordination with event organisers
The event organiser changes with every booking. Each one needs to understand your venue’s procedures and integrate them with their own event plan. Build this into your booking process: include PPP requirements in the hire contract, require a named responsible person from the organiser, and hold a pre-event briefing that covers security alongside the usual operational handover.
Loading bays and build-up days
Build-up and breakdown days are your most vulnerable periods. Loading bays are open, large vehicles are coming and going, and access control is minimal. Exhibitors and contractors move freely. You can’t badge-scan everyone during a chaotic load-in, but you can ensure loading bay access is supervised, vehicle movements are managed, and your team maintains awareness during these periods.
Worked Example: Exhibition venue Procedures
A mid-sized exhibition venue with two interconnected halls, a registration foyer, three meeting rooms, a loading bay, a catering area, and back-of-house offices. Total capacity 500 across both halls.
| Procedure | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 500 (350 visitors + 80 exhibitors + 30 organiser and contractor staff + 20 venue staff + 20 caterers) |
| Evacuation | Main entrance from foyer to car park; Hall A fire exits (2) to assembly point on the east side; Hall B fire exit to service yard; meeting room fire exit to rear path; loading bay roller shutters (can be opened for mass exit if the threat is elsewhere). PA announcement to all areas. Venue operations team at each exit directing flow. Event organiser directs their own exhibitors and staff. |
| Invacuation | Meeting rooms (solid walls, lockable doors, limited capacity). Back-of-house offices and corridors. Loading bay area with roller shutters closed. Catering prep area (interior, few windows). Halls themselves are poor shelter due to large external walls and roller shutter doors. Move people from the halls to interior spaces. |
| Lockdown | Main entrance doors locked by reception (electronic or manual); loading bay roller shutters closed (venue operations); hall fire exits secured from inside (push bars prevent entry); meeting room external windows checked; service entrance locked (facilities team). Registration desks abandoned. PA announcement to remain in place and move away from external walls. |
| Communication | PA system covering all halls, foyer, and meeting rooms. Venue operations team on radio. Event organiser has their own radios for their staff. Venue duty manager coordinates with event organiser’s responsible person. Registration desk staff direct visitors near the entrance. Duty manager calls 999. For concurrent events in different halls, each hall has a designated venue team member as the communication link. |
| Training | Venue staff trained at induction and refreshed before each major event season. Casual event staff (registration, stewarding, catering) get a briefing at the start of each event day: exits, shelter areas, who is in charge. Exhibitor manual includes a one-page security summary with a map of exits and shelter points. Event organisers briefed during the pre-event planning meeting. Pre-show announcement before doors open to exhibitors covers the essentials in two minutes. |
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.
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Take the free 60-second readiness checkStaff Training for Exhibition Venues
Your venue staff are the constant. They’re the ones who know the building, and they’re there for every event. Invest in training them properly. Everyone else (exhibitors, event organisers, casual staff) gets a condensed version that covers the basics.
Include a security summary in the exhibitor manual that every exhibitor receives. A single page with a map showing exits, shelter areas, and what to do if they hear a PA announcement. Most exhibitors won’t read it in detail, but it’s there when they need it.
The pre-event briefing with the event organiser is your most important coordination moment. Cover your venue procedures, agree how you’ll communicate during an incident, and confirm who their responsible person is. Five minutes in a planning meeting can prevent confusion during a real event.
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
- Work out your maximum capacity (visitors + exhibitors + staff + contractors at your largest event)
- Map all exit routes, including loading doors, exhibitor access, and emergency exits across all halls
- List every entry point and how each locks: main entrance, loading bays, exhibitor entrances, service doors
- Plan for changing floor layouts (exit routes shift depending on how the space is configured for each event)
- Plan how you’ll communicate with visitors across a large open space (PA system, staff with radios, digital signage)
- Include a security summary in the exhibitor manual (exits, shelter areas, what to do if they hear a PA announcement)
- Hold a pre-event coordination meeting with each event organiser covering your procedures and communication plan
- Brief all permanent venue staff on procedures and exhibitor teams during setup
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.
- Write procedures for evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, and communication tailored to your exhibition venue.
- Make sure your staff and volunteers know the procedures. Brief them, put up posters, hand out one-page summaries.
- Keep records of what you have done and who has been briefed.
- 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.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does Martyn’s Law apply to my exhibition venue right now?
Who is the responsible person, the venue or the event organiser?
Our layout changes every week. How do we write fixed procedures?
Do we need to train every exhibitor?
What about build-up days when the loading bay is wide open?
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Standard Tier (2026). Martyn’s Law for Exhibition Venues: What You Need to Do. Available at: https://www.standardtier.co.uk/guide/martyns-law-for-exhibition-venues
Last reviewed: 21 March 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.