Martyn’s Law has been on the statute book since April 2025, but the duties it creates are not enforceable yet. If your school is in scope — and for the great majority of UK schools it is — you have roughly a school year to get ready. Most of that work is admin you already do, written down and practised.
What Martyn’s Law is, in a minute
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 — known as Martyn’s Law — requires qualifying premises to be ready to protect the people on them. It received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025.
It works in two tiers. Standard tier premises, where 200 to 799 people may be present, must put public protection procedures in place: evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication. Enhanced tier premises, at 800 or more, have additional duties including documented plans submitted to the regulator, the Security Industry Authority.
The duties are not live yet. The Government has stated an implementation period of at least 24 months from Royal Assent, so enforcement is expected from around April 2027. There is no legal requirement to comply before then — but there is a strong practical argument for not leaving it to the summer of 2027.
Does it apply to your school?
Four things have to be true: there is at least one building; the premises are used for a Schedule 1 use, which includes education; at least 200 individuals may reasonably be expected to be present at the same time; and the premises are not excluded under Schedule 2.
The detail that catches schools out is that the 200 includes staff. Pupils, teachers, teaching assistants, office staff, kitchen staff, site team, visitors. A two-form-entry primary is closer to the threshold than it feels.
Your number also decides your tier: 200 to 799 is Standard, 800 or more is Enhanced. Primaries and smaller secondaries tend to fall into Standard tier; larger secondaries, sixth-form colleges and split campuses are more likely to be Enhanced.
You do not need a new methodology to work the number out. Fire-safety occupancy calculations you already hold, or historic attendance and visitor data, are both accepted approaches — and the Home Office has published a supplementary document on assessment methods alongside the statutory guidance.
Does Martyn’s Law apply in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Yes. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 is UK-wide legislation and applies in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The scope criteria and the two tiers are the same wherever your school is. Devolved education arrangements do not change whether the Act applies to your premises.
What it actually means, day to day
Strip out the legal language and the Act asks for four things your school already half-does:
- Evacuation — getting everyone out, and knowing who is out. Not just a headcount: a named list, when the field is full and the office is empty.
- Invacuation — moving people to a safer place inside, which is the opposite instinct to a fire drill and needs practising for that reason.
- Lockdown — securing the site quickly, and telling every adult in the building what their part is.
- Communication — getting instructions to the people who are on site, not only the people sitting at a desk with email open.
None of this is new to schools. You run fire drills, you sign visitors in, you phone parents. What changes is that these become procedures — appropriate to your premises, known by the people who work there, and followed under pressure.
Be sceptical of anyone selling you compliance
The Act does not prescribe any particular system, and no software makes a school compliant on its own — ours included. What the Act requires is procedures that may reduce harm. If a supplier tells you their product ticks the Martyn’s Law box, that is a sales claim, not a legal one.
Where should a school start?
Work out your number first, and write down how you reached it, because the reasoning is what you would show the regulator. Then refresh the four procedures, check you can answer who is on site at any moment, practise, and keep a record. Four of those five steps are policy and time rather than purchase.
- Work out your number, and write down how you got it. The reasoning matters as much as the figure, because that is what you would show the regulator.
- Write or refresh the four procedures. Standard tier does not have to submit documented plans; Enhanced tier does. Either way, someone has to be able to read them and act.
- Check you can answer “who is on site right now?” At 9am, at 2pm, and during a school production on a wet Wednesday evening. Every one of the four procedures depends on that answer.
- Practise. A procedure nobody has walked through is a document, not a procedure.
- Keep a record. What you did, when you did it, and who was there.
Steps one, two, four and five are policy and time. Step three is the one that tends to stall, because it is the only one that needs live information rather than a written plan.
It is also worth knowing what enforcement looks like, because the word tends to do more work than it should. The SIA has said it will support, advise and guide duty holders in the first instance. Compliance notices, monetary penalties and restriction notices are for serious or persistent non-compliance, not for a school that is visibly getting on with it.
Where OnSite fits
OnSite is the part of GroupEd that covers step three and the mechanics of the four procedures: sign-in for visitors, staff and pupils, evacuation roll call, lockdown and mass communication — in one platform, on one log.
In practice that means a live named list of everyone currently on site; a roll call several staff can carry out at the same time, so leadership can see who is still unaccounted for while it is happening; a lockdown any authorised member of staff can start from their phone, with role-specific instructions going out in seconds; and a time-stamped record of every sign-in, evacuation, lockdown and message afterwards.
We have written up how each of the four procedures maps to the day job, with the statutory guidance behind it, on our Martyn’s Law page. If you would rather see it working, book a 30-minute demo and we will walk through it on a school like yours.
This article is informational and does not constitute legal advice. The statutory guidance on gov.uk is the authority — and if you are not sure which tier you are in, that is the place to start.
