Martyn’s Law has become law, as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, a legal responsibility on premises of capacity of 200-plus to take measures against the threat of terrorism. Mark Rowe looks at four fields where problems may lie ahead before the law comes in properly.
As featured in the May edition of Professional Security Magazine, much remains for the law to come into force – practitioners will need a training course to pass, to show a qualification to meet the law, consultants will want to register their expertise, to advise premises; the regulator the Security Industry Authority (SIA) has to set up the inspectorate. The law is premises, and event-based. Here are four sorts of premises that may have difficulty in complying with the law, of varying importance, whether because of the number of premises or their attraction as targets to terrorists.
Places of worship
Threats against places of worship are a matter of public record – the Christchurch massacres in mosques in 2019 and indeed other outrages abroad have been taken as examples to follow by some extreme right-wingers. The year 2017 saw the Finsbury Park attack in north London. Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023 saw a spike in anti-semitism aimed at synagogues and Jewish buildings and people generally. A woman was jailed for life in 2020 for plotting a terrorist attack on St Paul’s Cathedral. Places of worship can also be a target simply as places where the community gathers (the murder of the Conservative MP Sir David Amess took place in a Methodist church hall in his Southend constituency). Yet Martyn’s Law made an exception of places of worship – not that they should have especially more to do, to protect visitors and worshippers, but that they come under the ‘standard’ tier that requires less of smaller premises, no matter if their congregational size falls into the ‘enhanced’, larger, 800-plus category.
Places of worship for years have been able to apply for Home Office money, so that the largest mosques and cathedrals, even the most regional ones such as Hereford, pictured, typically have anti-ram bollards to prevent ‘vehicle as a weapon’ attacks (such as Finsbury Park; the Christchurch attacker had a vehicle, but was a marauding firearms attacker). The Home Office’s money is three-fold: a Jewish Community Protective Security grant, goes to the Jewish charity the Community Safety Trust (CST) while grant schemes are for mosques and Muslim community centres; and other faiths (‘not currently open for applications’). By contrast, the Government made plain that local government and businesses alike would not get public money towards compliance with Martyn’s Law. It’s arguable why the Home Office should have favoured places of worship – because congregations need geeing up to do concrete things to protect themselves, because religious people are unworldly, see the best in people and (like parliamentarians) don’t like to be seen to turn themselves into fortresses? The ‘Protect Duty’ (another term for Martyn’s Law) may find the largest, metropolitan places of worship – like their equivalent museums – already doing what Martyn’s Law calls for, and able to call on the Metropolitan Police, with its counter terror experience; those places will only have to document it for the SIA. What though (only singled out to represent the corners of England) of Truro, Carlisle, Durham and Norwich?
Sports grounds
Sports grounds that fall under the Safety at Sports Grounds Act 1975 are scheduled to come under the 2025 Act, the same as shops, pubs, entertainment venues, museums and libraries, halls and conference centres, ‘visitor attractions’, and hotels. Yet sports grounds already come under the SGSA (Sports Ground Safety Authority). Martyn’s Law is on the agenda for the SGSA’s annual conference, in Liverpool on May 20. Sports grounds – football, cricket, and rugby – typically host music concerts out of season, and racecourses have music concerts or deejays to bring in and keep customers. Sport, in a word, overlaps with other entertainment. Yet the SGSA has kept itself aloof from the SIA. Small wonder, as in its early days in the 2000s the SIA tried to licence football stewards, rebuffed by football clubs who didn’t want the expense; hence the somewhat awkward stewarding and security forces on match days when the SIA badged do ‘licensable activity’ such as door supervision of drinking areas, and eject the unruly. To take the example of a fourth tier football match from April 2024, Doncaster Rovers versus Barrow, subject to a Football Association fine of Rovers after a pitch invasion, Rovers had 152 doing stewarding, of which 18 were SIA-badged. Safety, then, is not the same as security; though the SGSA’s sixth edition of its ‘Green Guide’ to safety at sports grounds featured more about terrorism than earlier editions (the seventh edition, due in 2028, is another topic for the SGSA at Liverpool). That, and the security search regimes at grounds on entry, arose from the terrorist attempt on the Stade de Paris on the night of the Bataclan massacre in 2015. Sports grounds and the SGSA, then, have responded to the terror threats of recent years. Like any institutions, the SGSA and SIA each have their interests to protect; they will have to divvy out who looks after what. We will have to trust they neither cause unnecessary duplication nor leave dangerous gaps.
Hospitals
At the recent security exhibition at the NEC, Laura Smith, chair of the UK chapter of the US-based IAHSS (International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety) described, in reply to a question by Professional Security, the bringing in by hospitals of Martyn’s Law as ‘tricky’. That’s because of the recent decision by the Labour Government to abolish NHS England, which operates the National Health Service; and to halve the budgets of ICBs (integrated care boards) which commission services. That will leave the health service for the next year or two (that is, the ‘implementation period’ of Martyn’s Law) in flux, including any national direction for counter-terrorism and security management. That was already in flux and has been since the NHS-wide security management and fraud prevention service was abolished, leaving only the original fraud part. Judging by the last two conference of the National Association for Healthcare Security (NAHS) in Birmingham in 2023 and 2024, NHS England’s moves towards rebuilding a national standards-setting body for security management were faltering in any case. Meanwhile, it’s again a matter of public record that terrorists do not shy from targeting hospitals; the explosion inside a taxi outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital in November 2021 was a presumed IED (improvised explosive device). In March a man was sentenced, jailed for life, for terrorist offences including at St James’ Hospital, Leeds. Generally speaking, and understandably, hospital leaders tend to regard counter terrorism and security management as less important than the purpose of treating patients.
Education
Like farmers and police officers, you will never hear teachers publicly admit that their occupation is doing well. Daniel Kabede, general secretary of the National Education Union in his recent speech to his NEU’s annual conference, complained of an education system ‘being starved of funds’ and ‘crumbling classrooms’ and a ‘crisis in recruitment and retention’ of teachers. As with hospitals, understandably schools will look to prioritise what they are there for – children’s learning (and teachers’ pay). Besides, gone are the days of easy access to schools, due to safeguarding. For any site, the time of its vulnerability is at opening and closing, whether a lone worker at a shop, or a venue taking in or letting out ticket holders (as exploited by the Manchester Arena suicide bomber). Hence at finishing time, primary schools only let a pupil leave the premises when a parent is in sight to go to. Thankfully, the UK has been spared the United States’ spate of gun attacks on schools and colleges, though knife-carrying is a concern. However, a deeply concerning case that reached sentencing in March saw a Luton teenager jailed for life for murdering three family members and intending to carry out shootings at his former primary school.
