Home Office publishes the Martyn's Law statutory guidance
· Written up 8 September 2026
The document explaining what venues actually have to do finally landed, more than a year after Royal Assent. For standard tier it confirmed things rather than changing them.
What happened
On 15 April 2026 the Home Office published its section 27 statutory guidance. The main document runs to around 130 pages, with three shorter supplementary papers alongside it: one on methods for working out how many people you expect, one with worked examples of what is and isn't in scope, and one pointing at further resources.
The Security Industry Authority opened its own consultation the same day, on the section 12 guidance that sets out how it intends to regulate. That consultation closed on 12 June 2026 with around 200 written responses, and the final version was expected in autumn 2026.
Both had been promised for a long time. Until they arrived, venues had the Act itself, a handful of factsheets and the 2024 consultation response to work from.
What it means for your venue
For a venue holding 200 to 799 people, the guidance held no real surprises. The two duties are unchanged: have public protection procedures covering evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication, and notify the SIA once that duty starts. Still no equipment to buy, no physical alterations, and no mandatory training course.
You don't need to read all 130 pages. A lot of it deals with scope questions and with enhanced tier, which starts at 800 people and carries considerably heavier duties. The parts worth your time are the four procedures, and the scope examples if your numbers sit near a threshold.
It's also the document to check when someone tells you what the Act requires of you. It's free, it's the Home Office's own, and it has since been corrected once, in August 2026, so it's worth reading the current version rather than a copy someone saved in the spring.
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Standard Tier (2026). Home Office publishes the Martyn's Law statutory guidance. Available at: https://www.standardtier.co.uk/updates/home-office-publishes-statutory-guidance
Last reviewed: 8 September 2026.
This update 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.