Martyn’s Law training: what the Act requires of your staff

Where the deadline actually sits

There is no legal duty to comply until commencement, and organisations should be wary of suppliers implying otherwise. The honest position is that the requirements are known, the date is not yet fixed beyond an expectation of Spring 2027, and the implementation period exists precisely so that duty holders can prepare rather than scramble.

Two things follow. Budget cycles matter more than the commencement date — an organisation setting its 2027 training budget is making the Martyn’s Law decision now, whether or not it frames it that way. And for high-turnover sectors, training everyone once before commencement is not a strategy, because the workforce will have substantially changed by the time the duty bites. The realistic goal is a repeatable process, not a one-off campaign.

Which tier applies

Scope is set by capacity, and capacity is where most organisations get their assessment wrong.

Two counting rules catch people out. Capacity includes staff, not just customers, visitors or audience — which moves a surprising number of venues over a threshold. And capacity is assessed at realistic peak use, not a typical quiet period, so a venue that occasionally hosts a larger event may be in scope on the strength of those events alone.

The Security Industry Authority has been designated as the regulator.

Who this affects — beyond the obvious

Coverage is far broader than the stadium-and-arena framing that dominates the coverage. Premises likely to fall within scope include:

• Hospitality — larger pubs, restaurants, hotels, nightclubs
• Retail — shopping centres, larger stores
• Education — schools, colleges and universities, including buildings used for public events
• Healthcare — hospitals and larger clinical sites
• Places of worship
• Leisure — cinemas, theatres, museums, visitor attractions, sports and leisure centres
• Village and community halls hosting larger events
• Local authority venues and civic buildings

Many of these organisations have no existing security training function and no obvious internal owner for the duty. That, rather than the content itself, is the practical difficulty most will face.

What the training has to achieve

The duty is not satisfied by awareness. Staff need to be able to act on the procedures for their premises — which exit, which assembly point, who calls whom, what lockdown means in a building with that particular layout. Generic terrorism-awareness content delivers background understanding and leaves the operational gap untouched.

The distinction between fire evacuation and terrorism evacuation deserves particular attention, because staff trained on fire procedures frequently assume they transfer. In several scenarios the correct response is close to the opposite of fire drill instinct, and untrained staff will default to the procedure they know.

Evidencing compliance

A defensible position needs dated, individual records mapped to premises-specific procedures — not a certificate stating that generic training was purchased.

Turnover is the operational crux. In hospitality and retail, annual training leaves a large proportion of staff untrained at any given moment, and a compliance position that was accurate in January is not accurate in June. Training built into onboarding, tracked per site, is the only approach that holds up across a year.

How TIQPlus supports Martyn’s Law readiness

For training providers, Martyn’s Law opens a substantial new market: tens of thousands of in-scope premises, many with no existing training relationship and no internal capability to build this themselves.