Martyn’s Law for Libraries: What You Need to Do

TL;DR

Libraries with 200 to 799 people in the building at once, counting users, children at a session, hirers of your community room, and everyone working including volunteers, are standard tier under Martyn’s Law. Above 800 it’s enhanced tier instead. Plenty of libraries never come close to 200 and are out of scope entirely, so the first job is an honest count rather than a plan. If you are in scope, the hard parts are counting people who come and go all day, telling five different groups the same thing at once, and the hours when the door is open on a fob and nobody is on duty. Below: how to count without tickets, what to do about hired rooms, and a worked example for a 215-person Saturday.

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Most libraries already have a fire evacuation, and many run a safeguarding routine and a booking system for the rooms they hire out. Martyn’s Law adds the parts those don’t cover: invacuation (keeping everyone inside when the street is the problem), lockdown (securing doors, including the one a hirer has propped open), and getting the same message to a storytime, a study floor, a job club, and the computer bank at the same moment by some route other than the fire alarm.

Whether any of that applies to you is a question of arithmetic, and for a lot of libraries the answer is no. A single-room branch that serves forty people on a good morning is nowhere near the threshold. The buildings that do reach it are the central and town-centre libraries that have quietly become community buildings: a children’s session in one corner, a job club in a meeting room, sixty students in for exams, a hired room upstairs, and a warm space policy in January. And that building can pass 200 without anybody noticing, because nobody counts and everyone comes and goes. If your library also hosts author events or hires out a hall, the community halls guide covers the hirer side in more detail. The rest of this guide starts with the count, because everything else depends on it.

Does Martyn's Law Apply to Libraries?

Yes. Libraries fall under Libraries, museums, galleries (Schedule 1, paragraph 5) of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, which applies once 200 or more people, including staff, volunteers, and contractors, are regularly expected on site at the same time. If your library 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 Library Capacity

Footfall is not occupancy, and this is where most library counts go wrong. Your issue and door figures record how many people came through in a day, which for a busy town library can be four figures. What the Act asks is how many were in the building at the same moment. The two numbers are miles apart, and using the wrong one either terrifies you unnecessarily or gives you a false sense of being out of scope. If you have a door counter, you need some sense of how long an average visit lasts before that data becomes an occupancy figure.

Your fire safety occupancy figure is usually the quickest and most defensible starting point, and someone has already calculated it. A manual count at a genuinely busy moment is the other easy option, and in a library it’s more practical than it sounds: one walk of both floors on a Saturday morning with a clicker gives you a real number. Both are accepted methods, and neither needs a consultant.

Count everyone working, including volunteers. That’s the desk team, the volunteers who run the reading group or the computer help session, a home library service driver who’s in that afternoon, cleaners, and anyone doing maintenance. In a community-managed library the entire staffing may be volunteers, and they count towards the threshold in exactly the same way as paid staff.

Your peak comes from the programme rather than the browsing. A normal Tuesday might be sixty people. A Saturday with storytime, a class visit, a job club and the study tables full is a different building. So is the summer reading challenge launch, exam season, an author event, a polling day if you’re a polling station, and a cold January if you run as a warm space. The test is what you can reasonably expect from time to time, so a busy pattern that comes round every year counts even if most weeks are quiet.

If your library sits inside a bigger building, sort out whose premises are whose before counting. Where the library is separate qualifying premises in its own right, occupying part of a shopping centre or a leisure centre, the responsible person is whoever controls those premises for their use as a library. Where that control is shared, each party is responsible in their own right and the Act expects them to coordinate. Where instead the whole building is one premises put to more than one use, regulations in force from 15 October 2026 say you go with the principal use, and the Home Office example of a building holding a library, council services and a café comes out as public authority rather than library. So on a civic centre or community hub site, work that through rather than assuming the library use leads. A community-managed library run by a charity or a community interest company is usually the responsible person itself, even where the council owns the building, because the test is operational control rather than freehold.

Not sure where you fall? Use our free capacity calculator to work it out.

Key Challenges for Libraries

Most Libraries 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:

Five different groups, all needing telling at once

At a busy moment a library is several venues sharing a roof. Students at the tables have headphones in and have trained themselves to ignore everything. The children’s area has twenty under-fives, their carers, and a lot of noise. The computers have people mid-application who won’t want to leave a form. The meeting room door is closed. Someone is asleep in an armchair. One announcement from the desk reaches maybe half of them. So split the floor into zones, give each zone a named person, and accept that the plan is people walking and speaking rather than a single broadcast. If you have a PA, use it to start the process rather than to finish it.

The room you hired out to someone else

If you let a meeting room or a hall to a hirer, you’ve got a group in your building run by somebody who doesn’t work for you and may never have been told anything. That group might be the largest single gathering in the library. The fix is in the booking, not on the day: a short procedures summary in the hire agreement, the exits and the muster point named on the room’s door notice, and a named person from the hiring group who knows what happens if the library evacuates. Ask for that name at the point of booking. It costs the hirer nothing and it means you’re not counting heads for a group you don’t know the size of.

Hours when the door opens on a fob and nobody is on duty

Extended access, open library, open plus, whatever your service calls it: the building is open, members let themselves in, and there is no member of staff or volunteer anywhere in it. The duty doesn’t switch off with the lights, but the standard is what’s appropriate and reasonably practicable, and that’s a different bar for an empty building than for a Saturday morning. Practical answers exist: clear signage at the entrance and every fire exit saying what to do and where to go, a way to raise an alarm that reaches whoever monitors the site, and checking that the fire exits open without a fob. Write those hours down as their own section rather than leaving a gap in the procedures.

Volunteers who are the whole team

In community-managed libraries the rota is volunteers from end to end, often retired, often doing one shift a fortnight, and sometimes on their own. Those are the people who would carry the procedures out, and the Act expects them to be told. What works is short and repeated: one page, a ten-minute walk of the exits and the safer room on a first shift, and a card by the desk. What doesn’t work is a policy document in a folder. Whether the library is council-run or community-run, keep a list of who has been briefed and when, because that list is the evidence you’d want to be able to show.

Users who can’t simply be told to leave

Libraries serve people other venues don’t see: users with mobility aids or assistance dogs, people with dementia, unaccompanied children waiting for a parent, people who are homeless and have nowhere else warm to be, users who don’t speak much English, and people who find sudden noise and instruction genuinely distressing. An evacuation plan that assumes everyone stands up and walks out doesn’t describe your building. So work out in advance who needs help and how, particularly on an upper floor where the lift is out of the question, and brief the team that some people will need a hand rather than an instruction repeated louder.

One person on the desk

Self-service kiosks have made it normal for a large library to run on a very small team, sometimes one member of staff on the ground floor and a volunteer upstairs. That’s the reality your procedures have to work in, so write them for the staffing you actually have on a Tuesday rather than the staffing on your best day. Name a deputy for every named role, because the person the plan depends on will be on leave at some point. And be honest about what one person can do. Something short that a lone worker can actually carry out is worth more than a thorough plan that assumes four people.

Worked Example: Library Procedures

A town-centre public library on two floors. Ground floor: entrance and desk, self-service kiosks, lending stock, a children’s area, and twelve computers. First floor: reference and local studies, study tables, a meeting room let to community groups, and a small staff office. Four staff on a Saturday plus two volunteers, and a Saturday morning with storytime running and the study tables full in exam season.

Procedure	Implementation
Capacity	215 at the Saturday morning peak (86 users across the ground floor, 34 children and carers at storytime, 22 at the computers, 47 at the study tables and in reference upstairs, 18 in the meeting room for a hired community session, 4 staff and 2 volunteers, plus 2 contractors working on the lift)
Evacuation	First floor down the main stairs and the rear staircase by the staff office, never the lift, and out through the ground-floor fire door into the side alley. Ground floor out through the main entrance and the children’s area fire door, which keeps the storytime group away from the crush at the front. Muster in the market square opposite, well clear of the building. The duty manager picks the direction. The children’s area lead moves the storytime group as one, carers keeping their own children. The hirer’s named person moves the meeting room group. Named sweeps for the toilets, the local studies room, the staff office and the study tables, each reporting back by name.
Invacuation	The meeting room and the local studies room upstairs are the designated safer spaces: interior rooms, solid doors, no external glazing. The ground floor faces the square through a fully glazed frontage and is the worst place in the building to shelter, so people there go up the rear stairs rather than staying put. Anyone who can’t manage stairs moves into the staff area behind the desk, which is internal and has a solid door. The children’s area is on the glazed side, so the storytime group moves with the rest.
Lockdown	The main entrance doors are secured from the desk, and both Saturday staff have been shown how, not just the manager. The rear fire door and the alley door are secured from inside by whoever is upstairs. Meeting room and local studies doors closed, lights down, groups kept in place. Self-service kiosks stay on, because nothing about them matters at that point. All of it releasable from inside if a fire starts.
Communication	The desk phone doubles as a PA into both floors, so the duty manager uses it to start the process and to get heads up, then people finish the job. One member of staff or volunteer per zone walks their area and repeats the same short line: ground floor lending, the children’s area, the computers, the study tables, the meeting room. Study users wearing headphones get someone standing in front of them rather than an announcement. The desk calls 999, stops anyone else coming in, and meets the emergency services in the square.
Training	Staff at induction and once a year. Volunteers get ten minutes on their first shift, walking the two staircases and the safer rooms rather than reading about them, then a reminder at the volunteer catch-up each term. Cards at the desk and in the upstairs office. Hirers get the one-page summary with the booking confirmation and give a named person for their group. The extended access hours are written down as their own section, signed off separately, because nobody is in the building to carry anything out.

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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Staff Training for Libraries

Write the plan for the staffing you actually have. A Saturday morning briefing that assumes four people on shift is no use on a Tuesday when there are two, so name a deputy for every role and check the whole thing still works when the person it depends on is on leave. Lone working is normal in libraries, and a short procedure a single person can carry out beats a thorough one that needs a full team.

Volunteers get the same information as staff, delivered in a way that fits a fortnightly rota: one page, ten minutes walking the actual route on a first shift, and a card by the desk. The Act expects procedures to be communicated to everyone who would carry them out, and it counts volunteers explicitly. Keep a list of names and dates. In a community-managed library that list may be the only record anyone has.

Brief the people who run sessions in your building, not just the people who work in it. The storytime lead, the job club organiser, the reading group volunteer and whoever booked the meeting room are each in charge of a group of people at the moment something happens. They need to know how they’ll be told, where their group goes, and that somebody expects them at the muster point.

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

Count people in the building at one moment, not daily footfall or issue figures, and write down which method you used
Check your busiest realistic pattern: a Saturday with sessions on, exam season, the summer reading challenge, a warm-space January
Include volunteers, home library service staff, cleaners and contractors in the count
Split the floor into zones and give each one a named person, with a named deputy
Put a procedures summary in every room hire agreement and ask the hirer for a named person
Write down what happens during extended access hours, including signage, raising an alarm, and whether fire exits open without a fob
Work out who would need help to evacuate, especially from an upper floor where the lift is out
Pick a safer interior space away from the glazed frontage, and check it holds the number you’d send there
Make sure more than one person on any given shift can secure the entrance
Brief every volunteer in ten minutes on shift, put a card at the desk, and keep a note of who and when

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 library.
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 libraries yet?

Not yet. The Act passed in April 2025 but won’t be enforced until Spring 2027 at the earliest, and there’s no way to notify the regulator (the SIA) yet, because the online system is still being built. The Home Office published its final statutory guidance on 15 April 2026, so you can plan against the finished rules rather than waiting to see what they say.

Our library never has 200 people in at once. Are we out of scope?

If that’s genuinely true, yes, and a lot of branch libraries are. The duties only bite where you can reasonably expect 200 or more individuals present at the same time. Two things to check before you conclude it: count everyone working as well as everyone visiting, and check your busiest pattern rather than a normal week. A branch that runs at seventy on a Wednesday can be a different building during the summer reading challenge or on a class visit day. If you’re close to the line, count properly once and write down what you found.

We’re a community-managed library run by volunteers. Who’s the responsible person?

Whoever has control of the premises in connection with their use as a library, which is normally the charity, trust or community group that runs it, even where the council still owns the building. Ownership isn’t the test. If the council retains control over parts of the building, or over how it’s used, both of you may have duties, in which case the Act expects you to coordinate and anyone with control who isn’t the responsible person still has to cooperate. Get that written down between you rather than assumed.

Our library is inside a council building with other services. Whose duty is it?

Potentially more than one person’s. Where premises sit within other premises, each responsible person has their own duty for what they control, and they have to coordinate with each other. In practice that means agreeing one evacuation plan for the building rather than two that contradict each other, deciding who calls it, and being clear about which parts of the building your count covers. Have the conversation with whoever runs the rest of the site now, because it’s a lot easier than having it during an incident.

We hire out a meeting room. Does the hirer plan for their own group?

You plan, and the hirer helps you carry it out. The duty sits with whoever controls the premises for their Schedule 1 use, which is you, and a hirer using a room for an afternoon usually isn’t taking control of the building. What you can reasonably ask is that the hire agreement includes your procedures, that the group has a named person who knows the exits and the muster point, and that you’re told roughly how many people to expect. That last one matters for your count as much as for the day itself.

What about extended access hours when nobody is on duty?

The duty doesn’t pause when the last person on the rota goes home, but what counts as appropriate is judged by what’s reasonably practicable, and that’s a lower bar for a building with no staff or volunteers in it. Sensible steps are signage at the entrance and every fire exit saying what to do and where to go, a way for someone in the building to raise an alarm that reaches whoever monitors the site, and checking that fire exits open without a fob. Write those hours into your procedures as their own section and be straight about what can and can’t be done when nobody is there.

Do we need security staff, bag searches or CCTV?

No. Standard tier is about procedures, not equipment or screening. There’s nothing to install and nothing to buy, and the Government has said plainly that complying shouldn’t need consultants or third-party products. Nothing in the Act asks you to check who comes through the door or why, which matters in a service whose whole point is that anyone can walk in. If you already have cameras or secured doors, they can feature in your procedures, but you don’t have to add them.

Official Sources

From the Sector

Martyn’s Law (Designing Libraries)

What's changed recently

New regulations set who's responsible when a building has more than one use (8 September 2026)

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Citation

Standard Tier (2026). Martyn’s Law for Libraries: What You Need to Do. Available at: https://www.standardtier.co.uk/guide/martyns-law-for-libraries

Last reviewed: 14 September 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.