Home Office corrects its tied-pub example: the tenant is responsible, not the brewery
· Written up 8 September 2026
The statutory guidance spent four months telling tied pub tenants that their brewery held the Martyn's Law duty. A correction slip reversed it: the tenant is in control, so the tenant is responsible.
What happened
When the Home Office published its statutory guidance on 15 April 2026, it came with a worked example of a pub owned by a brewery and let to a tenant. The example named the brewery as the responsible person, on the basis that the brewery held the premises licence.
That was wrong, and on 6 August 2026 the Home Office issued a correction slip replacing it. The example now reads that the brewery or pub company is the licence holder, but the tenant is in control of the premises for their relevant Schedule 1 use, so the tenant is the responsible person.
The correction went out quietly. It appears as a single line in the guidance page's update history, and as far as we can tell no trade or legal press reported it. Anyone who read the guidance between April and August, and anyone advised on the basis of that version, got the opposite answer to the one that now stands.
What it means for your venue
If you run a leased or tied pub, the duty is almost certainly yours rather than your pub company's. The test in section 4 is control of the premises, and it always was. Holding the premises licence has never been what decides it, which is why the original example was an error rather than a change of policy.
It's worth checking what your pub company has told you. If their compliance team read the April version, they may have passed on the wrong answer in good faith, and it may still be sitting in a tenant handbook somewhere.
One caveat. Where control of the premises is genuinely shared, section 8 can make more than one person responsible and expects them to coordinate. What it doesn't do is let either of them opt out.
Nothing here is enforceable yet. The duties are still expected to start in spring 2027, so this changes who needs to prepare, not when.
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Standard Tier (2026). Home Office corrects its tied-pub example: the tenant is responsible, not the brewery. Available at: https://www.standardtier.co.uk/updates/tied-pub-responsible-person-correction
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.