Martyn's Law for golf and sports clubs

Last reviewed: 23 July 2026

If you run a golf club or any other members' sports club, Martyn's Law may well apply to your clubhouse, and being members-only makes no difference to that. This guide covers what the law actually expects of a club like yours, who carries the responsibility, and how that changes once you factor in members out on the course.

The two tiers, and what they mean for a clubhouse

Before working out where your club 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, including staff, committee and volunteers alongside members and guests.

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 clubs reach this tier on clubhouse numbers alone. Where it comes up is a very large one-off function, more a question for events and festivals than this guide.

How to tell if your golf or sports club needs a plan for Martyn's Law

In the Home Office's own worked example, a golf club's premises count as a sports ground under Schedule 1, taking the clubhouse and its land together. The condition clubs most often get wrong is "open to the public": the guidance is explicit that limiting entry to members or their guests does not stop a premises being publicly accessible (para 4.7). A members' club that checks membership at the door is treated the same as any other venue.

Your tier depends on the headcount you can reasonably expect in the clubhouse at once, including predictable spikes like a captain's day or a wedding season, defined in the guidance as occurring "from time to time." That number must include staff, bar workers and greenkeepers on shift.

Below are some examples to help illustrate this:

• Club A (out of scope). A quiet weekday, 80 members and guests in the bar and lounge plus 10 staff, comes to 90, well under 200.
• Club B (standard tier, recurring function). The same clubhouse with a bar and lounge holding 140, a terrace for 40, and 15 staff comes to 195 on a normal day, out of scope. Hosting a captain's day or a wedding reception in the function room reaches 250, every year. Because that kind of peak happens reliably, the club is in scope on the "from time to time" test.
• Club C (open course exclusion). A club that lets anyone wander the fairways keeps the open-land exclusion for the course itself. The same club checking membership before letting people onto the grounds loses that exclusion, so those areas need to be counted too, on top of the clubhouse.

To double check whether your club 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 a members' club, that's the club itself, acting through its committee, rather than any one individual. For a proprietary club owned by a company, the owning company holds the duty.

Either way, responsibility can be shared out in practice, usually to the secretary or general manager, but it can't be handed off entirely: the committee or the owner remains on the hook even when a member of staff does the day-to-day work.

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:

1. Register your club 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.
2. 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 members and staff what to do.

Course challenge: unlike most venues, part of your premises might be well out of earshot of a clubhouse announcement. Members can be out on the course when something happens, so communication needs a way to reach them too, whether that's a pro-shop tannoy, a phone tree, or radios if your club already uses them for other reasons. On a quiet weekday with three staff on, procedures need to work with the people actually present; on a Saturday with a wedding party and a full bar, the same procedures need to work for a room full of people who don't know the building.

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 your members. None of that is required at the standard tier.

• You do not need a written plan by law, though the guidance recommends one because it's hard to demonstrate compliance without one (para 7.32).
• You do not need to hire security staff, install CCTV, or buy any equipment.
• You do not need paid or accredited training. The guidance is clear that using a third-party product or service is never mandatory (para 6.7).
• You do not need to review your procedures on any set schedule. Reviewing periodically is good practice, not a legal requirement (para 7.29).
• You do not need a risk assessment document or a designated senior individual. Those only apply at the enhanced tier.

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 is reading the official guidance, applying it to your actual clubhouse, function room and grounds, and getting it written down in a way that would hold up if the SIA ever asked.

That's what Martyn's Law Plan was built to solve. It's a short online questionnaire any secretary or manager can complete, about your club and how it's run, that turns your answers into your four procedures, a written plan, and printable briefing cards for bar staff, stewards and greenkeepers. 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, or see how the service works for clubs if you already know you're in scope.

Similar venues: pubs and bars, village halls and gyms and leisure centres.

Common questions

Do the fairways and pitches count towards our numbers?

Only if access to them is controlled in the same way as the clubhouse. Open, uncontrolled grounds are excluded while nobody is checking membership or tickets at the gate (para 4.35). Once you're checking members in, that exclusion no longer applies, so most clubs are safest counting the clubhouse and any grounds they actively control, and treating the open course as a separate question.

We host weddings and functions. Does that change anything?

It can. A function room or marquee hired out for a wedding or a big society dinner adds to your numbers for that day, and if it regularly pushes you past 200 including staff, your club is in scope even though a normal Tuesday is quiet. The test is what happens from time to time, not what happens on average.

Is it the committee or the general manager who is responsible?

Legally, the duty sits with whoever controls the premises: for a members' club that's the club itself, acting through its committee, and for a proprietary club it's the owning company. In practice, most clubs put one named person, usually the secretary or general manager, in charge of the day-to-day task, while the committee keeps ultimate oversight.

Does Martyn's Law apply to sports clubs generally, not just golf?

Yes. The same test applies to rugby clubs, tennis clubs, bowls clubs, cricket clubs and any other members' sports club with a clubhouse or pavilion. If the clubhouse and any controlled grounds can reasonably hold 200 or more people, including staff and volunteers, at the same time, the club is in scope at the standard tier.

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: 23 July 2026. 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.