Guide
Standard tier Martyn's Law: what 200 to 799 capacity requires
Updated
The standard tier is far lighter than the marketing around it suggests. It asks for procedures your staff can follow, not hardware and not a security consultancy retainer.
Who is in the standard tier
Premises are qualifying premises where they consist of a building, are wholly or mainly used for a use in Schedule 1 to the Act, and it is reasonable to expect that from time to time 200 or more individuals may be present at the same time. They are enhanced duty premises at 800 or more, and standard duty premises in any other case (section 2). Places of worship, childcare settings and primary and secondary education institutions are standard duty premises whatever their numbers, under Schedule 1 (legislation.gov.uk).
The whole of the standard tier duty
Section 5 requires the responsible person, so far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure that appropriate public protection procedures are in place to reduce the risk of physical harm to individuals if an act of terrorism were to occur on the premises or in the immediate vicinity. The procedures are for staff to follow, and they cover four things (legislation.gov.uk).
- Evacuation
- Getting people out of the premises or event.
- Invacuation
- Moving people to a place on the premises where there is less risk of physical harm.
- Lockdown
- Preventing individuals entering or leaving.
- Communication
- Providing information to individuals on the premises or at the event.
What standard tier does not require
- No public protection measures. The monitoring, movement, physical security and information security measures in section 6 apply to enhanced duty premises and qualifying events only.
- No compliance document. The duty in section 7 to prepare a document and send it to the SIA also applies to the enhanced tier only.
- No designated senior individual. Section 10 applies where the responsible person is not an individual, and again only for the enhanced tier.
- No mandatory training spend. The guidance is explicit at paragraph 7.51 that there is no statutory requirement for specific training, and at 7.55 that it is not mandatory to pay for third party training.
What the standard tier will cost you
Mostly management time rather than money, if your fire evacuation plan is current. The realistic external spend is a scoping session to fix and evidence your capacity figure, help drafting the invacuation, lockdown and communication procedures, and briefing material for staff. Ask for those three as separate line items so you can do any of them in house. See what training really has to cost before you buy a course.
None of this is enforceable yet. Sections 5 to 10 are not in force, and no commencement date has been appointed: see the current commencement position.