How to Notify the SIA Under Martyn's Law

What Is the SIA Notification Duty?

Under Section 9 of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, the responsible person for a qualifying venue must notify the Security Industry Authority that they're responsible for it. You'll also need to tell the SIA if you stop being responsible, or if the details you gave become inaccurate. Notification is free of charge.

And that's the whole duty. The SIA doesn't approve or reject anything at this stage. You're telling the regulator you exist, roughly the way you'd tell HMRC you've started trading, so it knows who's responsible for which premises.

Can You Notify the SIA Yet?

No. The SIA's notification portal hasn't opened. In its 4 June 2026 update, the SIA said Martyn's Law is expected to go live in spring 2027 and ‘you won't be able to notify us until then’. The portal is still being built: the SIA has brought in a digital partner and plans to invite volunteers to test the system from early 2027. Nobody can notify yet, and anyone charging you to ‘register’ your venue now is selling something that doesn't exist.

You'll get three months, though. That number used to be an open question, and it isn't any more. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) (Notification Requirements) Regulations 2026 were made on 9 July 2026 and laid before Parliament five days later. If you're already responsible for a qualifying venue on the day the duty starts, you have three months from that day to tell the SIA. Take on a venue after that, or stop being responsible for one, and the window is 28 days. Same 28 days if something you told them stops being true. We wrote the change up when it landed: Notification deadlines are set: three months from the day the duty starts.

None of those clocks are running yet. The regulations only come into force when the notification duty itself does, so nothing is late and nobody is behind. The Home Office also published plain-English guidance on the notification requirement on 14 July 2026, which is the clearest official summary of what you'll be asked for.

If you'd like updates straight from the regulator, you can join the SIA's Martyn's Law mailing list. Or leave your email below and we'll do the watching for you. Our Martyn's Law updates list covers the same ground for venues holding 200 to 799 people.

What You'll Need When It Opens

Most of it is now known. The schedule to the 2026 regulations sets out what a notification has to contain: who the responsible person is and how to reach them, the venue's address, what it's used for under the Act, and the greatest number of people you expect on site at once, together with the method you used to reach that figure. That last part catches people out. It isn't enough to know your number, you need to be able to say how you worked it out.

What's still missing is the form itself. The SIA hasn't published it, so the exact wording, the order of the questions, and anything it asks for beyond the legal minimum are all still unknown. If you've built your procedures document with Standard Tier, you'll already have those details in one place.

Notifying the SIA is your legal responsibility as the responsible person. We'll tell you when it becomes possible, but the notifying itself stays with you.

The Other Duty Doesn't Wait

Notification is the quick duty. The slow one is having public protection procedures in place and making sure your staff and volunteers actually know them. That's the part an SIA inspector will ask about, and you don't need the portal to start on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Official Sources

• Section 9 of the Act (notification requirements)
• SIA statement: Martyn's Law, what comes next (4 June 2026)
• The SIA's new regulatory role
• Standard duty requirements factsheet

Related Guides

• See the full Martyn's Law timeline to enforcement
• Work through the compliance checklist
• Understand the four public protection procedures