Martyn's Law for community centres
Last reviewed:
If you manage a community centre, Martyn's Law may well apply to you, even if no single room ever looks busy on its own. Here's how the law actually counts a centre like yours, who's responsible for meeting it, and what that responsibility involves.
What the two tiers actually require
Before working out where your centre fits, it helps to understand how the law categorises premises and what those categories demand. Martyn's Law places public premises into two main tiers based strictly on maximum expected headcount across the whole building at once, including staff and volunteers.
Standard tier (200–799 people)
- What it means: focuses on simple, low-cost preparedness.
- Key requirement: you must notify the regulator and maintain basic procedures for four emergency responses (evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication).
- Implications: no mandatory paid training, expensive security upgrades, or heavy documentation are required.
Enhanced tier (800+ people)
- What it means: asks more of high-capacity premises, because of the larger potential impact of an incident.
- Key requirement: includes all standard tier duties, plus formal requirements like a documented vulnerability assessment, a designated senior responsible individual, and measures designed to reduce the premises' vulnerability.
Very few centres reach this tier on regular bookings. Where it comes up is a single hirer booking out the whole building for a large ticketed event, covered under "who is the responsible person" below.
How to tell if your community centre needs a plan for Martyn's Law
Community centres are covered by the "halls etc" category of the Act's 17 listed uses, the same one village halls sit in.
Your tier depends on the headcount you can reasonably expect across the whole building at once, including predictable spikes like an annual fair, defined in the guidance as occurring "from time to time." Because a community centre is one premises, simultaneous use across every room adds together into a single figure, not a separate count per room.
Below are some examples to help illustrate this:
- Centre A (out of scope). A quiet Tuesday with one meeting room in use, 40 attendees plus 3 staff, comes to 43, well under 200.
- Centre B (standard tier, rooms combined). A Saturday with a main hall event at 150, two meeting rooms in use at 30 each, plus 6 staff and volunteers on site. 150 + 30 + 30 + 6 = 216, in scope on that basis, even though no single room passed 200 on its own.
- Centre C (standard tier, recurring peak). A centre that's usually well under 100 hosts an annual craft fair that reaches 230, every year. Because that happens reliably, not as a one-off, the centre is in scope on the "from time to time" test, even though most weeks are quiet.
To double check whether your centre comes under the scope of Martyn's Law, use our free checker.
Who is the "responsible person"?
Someone has to be legally on the hook for getting this done. The law calls that person the responsible person, and for most community centres that's the operating charity, council team or management committee running day-to-day bookings and use, not necessarily the freehold owner.
A single external hirer booking out the whole centre for a large one-off event can shift control, and therefore responsibility, to that hirer for the event itself, while the centre's usual operator remains responsible the rest of the time.
See who the responsible person is for the full control test.
What you must do (standard tier)
If you're in the standard tier, compliance requires two primary actions:
- Register your centre with the Security Industry Authority
(SIA), the law's regulator.
- This is a simple registration, not an application process.
- There's no fee and no approval process to wait for. The SIA portal isn't open yet, so no action is required until it launches.
- Prepare four core emergency procedures. You must
establish basic, practical procedures for four scenarios:
- Evacuation. Getting people out of the building safely.
- Invacuation. Moving people to safe spaces inside the building.
- Lockdown. Securing doors to keep an external threat out.
- Communication. Quickly telling whoever's on site what to do.
Community centre challenge: several different user groups, a toddler class, a committee meeting, a private party, can be on site at once, often without knowing each other or the building well. A one-page briefing given to every hirer at booking, covering exits, the lockdown signal and the communication phrase, does most of the work here.
What you do not have to do (standard tier)
A lot of the worry around Martyn's Law comes from assuming it means security staff, an expensive consultant, or mandatory training courses for every hirer. None of that is required at the standard tier.
- You do not need a written plan by law, though the guidance recommends one, since it's hard to demonstrate compliance without it (para 7.32). See what para 7.32 actually says.
- You do not need to hire security staff or install CCTV.
- You do not need paid or accredited training; using a third-party product or service is never mandatory (para 6.7).
- You do not need a fixed review schedule; periodic review is good practice, not a legal requirement.
- You do not need a risk assessment document or a designated senior individual at the standard tier. Those apply only at the enhanced tier, for premises expecting 800 or more.
How to get Martyn's Law ready in minutes
If you're in scope for the standard tier, every duty above can be worked out and written down by hand, for free. It's perfectly possible, and we'd rather tell you that straight than fear-monger you into hiring a consultant or buying a tool you don't need.
The part that takes time for a multi-room, often volunteer-run centre is keeping track of who's using what, when, and making sure every hirer, not just permanent staff, knows what to do. It's a genuinely time-consuming job to get right by hand.
That's what Martyn's Law Plan was built to solve. It's a short online questionnaire any manager or committee member can complete, about your rooms and how they're normally booked, that turns your answers into a procedures document written for your actual building, with a one-page briefing sheet you can hand to every group that books in. Above all, it gives you peace of mind that you're prepared for when an inspection comes.
For now, start with the free tier checker, no email required, to confirm where you stand.
Similar venues: village halls and gyms and leisure centres.
Common questions
We're council-owned. Do we comply, or does the council?
Whoever controls the centre day to day, not necessarily whoever owns the building. If an independent charity or committee runs the centre, books the rooms and manages the site, that operator is the responsible person, even though the council owns the freehold. If the council directly runs the centre itself, the duty sits with them. Check your management or lease agreement if you're not sure which applies.
Do all the rooms count together, or separately?
Together. It's one premises, so simultaneous use across the main hall and any meeting rooms is added into a single total, staff and volunteers included, not assessed room by room.
Our regular classes are under 200, but one big event a year isn't. Are we in scope?
Possibly, yes. A predictable annual event that reaches 200 or more can bring you into scope even if a normal week never gets close, on the "from time to time" test.
About this guide. Written by the Martyn's Law Plan team, based on the statutory guidance published under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. Last reviewed: . Read the official guidance on GOV.UK.
Sources: Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025; Home Office statutory guidance (April 2026, updated May 2026) and supplementary documents. Paragraph references are to the statutory guidance. General information, not legal advice. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.