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For thousands of venues, shops, offices and public buildings across the UK, a significant new legal duty is now around six months away. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, better known as Martyn’s Law, became law in April 2025 and is expected to come into force in spring 2027, after a two-year implementation period.
The law is named after Martyn Hett, one of the 22 people killed in the Manchester Arena attack in 2017, and follows years of campaigning by his mother, Figen Murray. Its purpose is to make sure that places where large numbers of people gather have thought through, in advance, what they would do in the event of an attack.
Who it applies to
The Act sets out two tiers, based on how many people a premises can reasonably expect to be present at the same time:
- Standard tier: premises where 200 to 799 people may be present.
- Enhanced tier: premises and qualifying events where 800 or more people may be present.
The Security Industry Authority (SIA) will regulate the new regime, and the penalties are not trivial. Standard tier premises face fines of up to £10,000 for non-compliance, while enhanced tier organisations face penalties of up to £18 million or 5% of worldwide revenue, whichever is higher.
What standard tier premises need to do
For most businesses in scope, the duties are about planning and procedures rather than building work. Standard tier premises must have appropriate public protection procedures in place, so far as reasonably practicable, covering four things:
- Evacuation: getting people out of the building safely.
- Invacuation: bringing people into the building, or to a safer part of it, when the threat is outside.
- Lockdown: securing the building or parts of it to stop an attacker getting in.
- Communication: making sure staff and visitors know what’s happening and what to do.
Staff also need to be told about the procedures and, where appropriate, trained in them. The Act doesn’t require standard tier premises to make physical alterations or buy specific equipment.
Enhanced tier premises go further. They must put in place public protection measures covering how people move around the site, monitoring, physical safety and security, and the security of information. Unlike the standard tier, that may mean physical changes to the building where reasonably practicable.
Where the doors come in
On paper, lockdown and invacuation are procedures. In practice, they depend on the building being able to do what the plan says. A lockdown procedure assumes someone can quickly secure the entrances. An invacuation plan assumes there’s somewhere inside that people can be moved to and kept safe.
That’s where many businesses may find gaps when they walk through their plans for real:
- Can external doors be secured quickly? Lockdown is measured in seconds, not minutes. Doors that need a key from a back office, or shutters that take a long time to lower, may not fit the plan.
- Which doors are actually strong enough? Lightweight glazed doors and old timber side doors offer little protection. Steel doors in steel frames, with multi-point locking, are much harder to force.
- Is there a safer internal space? An invacuation point needs to be somewhere that can itself be secured, which often comes down to the strength and locking of an internal door.
- Do fire exits still work as fire exits? Any security upgrade must keep escape routes usable. Fire exit doors need to open easily from the inside without a key, so the plan has to secure them from the outside without blocking evacuation.
- Who knows how? The best door in the world doesn’t help if the staff on shift don’t know how to lock it, or where the controls are.
For standard tier premises, none of this is a legal requirement in itself. But testing a lockdown plan against the building often reveals that the procedure can’t work without some changes to how the doors are secured. For enhanced tier premises, physical security is part of the duty.
Starting now, not in spring
Six months sounds like plenty of time, but businesses that want to make physical improvements before the law comes into force will need to allow for surveys, specification, manufacture and installation, particularly for bespoke or made-to-measure doors.
A sensible order of work is:
- Work out whether your premises fall into the standard or enhanced tier.
- Read the Home Office and SIA guidance as it’s finalised.
- Draft evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication procedures.
- Walk through them on site, door by door, and note where the building can’t support the plan.
- Prioritise improvements, from simple changes to locks and procedures to upgrading key doors.
For entrances, stock rooms, plant rooms and internal safe areas that need to be properly secured, commercial security doors designed to resist forced entry, with suitable locking and, where needed, fire resistance, can be a practical part of the answer, so long as they’re specified alongside the procedures rather than instead of them.
Beyond compliance
Martyn’s Law is focused on terrorism, but the planning it requires has wider value. A building that can be locked down quickly is also better protected against violent incidents, break-ins and anti-social behaviour. Staff who know what to do in an emergency are more confident in their day-to-day work.
The law’s real test won’t be whether a business has a document on file. It will be whether, on an ordinary day, the people and the building can do what the plan says. Six months is enough time to find out, and to fix what doesn’t work.