Martyn's Law: What Venues and Events Need To Do Now

By the RedteQ team · Updated August 2026 · Not legal advice — always check current government guidance

The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, Martyn's Law, received Royal Assent in April 2025 with an implementation period of at least 24 months. The Government expects it to come into force in spring 2027, with the Security Industry Authority as regulator. That clock is running. Here's the practical version — starting with the part most equipment suppliers skip.

Buying or hiring screening equipment does not, by itself, make you compliant. Martyn's Law places duties on the responsible person for qualifying premises and qualifying events, and those duties are about assessment, procedures and — at the enhanced tier — documented measures. The Act mandates no specific equipment anywhere. Where entry screening is the proportionate answer it is one way of delivering a measure; it is never the thing that discharges the duty. We sell and hire screening equipment for a living, and we would still rather you heard that from us than from an enforcement officer.

Where The Law Came From

Martyn's Law is named for Martyn Hett, one of 22 people murdered in the Manchester Arena attack in May 2017. His mother, Figen Murray, campaigned for legislation requiring venues and events to take proportionate steps against the terrorist threat — assessing risks, identifying weak points and mitigating them. The Act is the result.

Who Is In Scope

Standard tier — premises with 200 to 799 people. Notify the Security Industry Authority (SIA) and put in place appropriate public protection procedures to reduce harm in the event of an attack. The focus is on simple, low-cost preparedness; physical security measures are not mandated.
Enhanced tier — premises and qualifying events with 800+ people. Everything above, plus appropriate measures to reduce the premises' vulnerability to attack and the risk of physical harm — documented and provided to the SIA.

"Reasonably practicable" runs through the Act: what's expected is proportionate to your size, resources and risk — a village hall is not expected to screen like an airport.

Where Screening Fits

For enhanced-tier venues and events — stadiums, arenas, festivals, exhibition halls, large places of worship — entry screening is one of the clearest vulnerability-reduction measures available. The practical question is how to do it without wrecking entry flow or the budget. A few honest observations from the checkpoints we run:

Manual bag searches don't scale. They're slow, inconsistent and generate exactly the crowded, impatient queue you're trying to avoid, which is itself a vulnerability.
Get advice before you buy anything. The first job isn't equipment, it's working out what is proportionate for your premises: where people gather, where the pinch points are, and what a realistic search regime looks like at your gate. We will walk your venue and advise on what is proportionate, with no assumption that the answer involves buying a machine. Where screening is the right call, hiring for a weekend or a season costs a fraction of purchasing, and we deliver, install, commission and support it with our own engineers, as we did at the Commonwealth Games.
AI raises the standard without raising headcount. AI weapons detection flags threats automatically and lets one operator run multiple lanes — significant when trained screeners are scarce.
Screening the perimeter matters too. The Act's thinking extends to the vicinity of a venue, and the queue outside your gate is itself a crowd. This is where standoff screening earns its place: Thruvision body scanners read concealed items on multiple people walking freely, at up to 7 metres, so a person-borne explosive device, a semi-automatic weapon or a large bladed weapon can be seen while there is still distance and time to act, with no archway, no queue and nobody stopped. Fast, touchless ferromagnetic detection suits outer layers too, where archways would bottleneck.

What To Do This Quarter

Confirm your tier: establish your reasonable-worst-case occupancy and whether you're standard, enhanced or out of scope.
Write the procedures: evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, communication. Standard-tier duties are mostly this.
If enhanced: assess entry screening honestly — footfall per gate per hour, threat items of concern, weather exposure, power. (Ask us to walk it with you.)
Trial before you commit: hire a lane for one event and measure real throughput before designing the permanent answer.

The implementation window is exactly that — a window, and with commencement expected in spring 2027 it is not a long one. Venues that trial screening now will arrive at that date with evidence, trained stewards and a working design, rather than a purchase order and hope.

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This is a practitioner's summary, not legal advice, and the SIA's statutory guidance and notification portal were still being finalised when we wrote it. For the authoritative position see the Home Office collection on the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 at gov.uk, the SIA's guidance on its role as regulator, and ProtectUK.