Martyn’s Law templates: what you actually need to write

People arrive at this question having decided they need a document. It is worth pausing on that, because the standard tier is lighter than almost everyone assumes — and the reason to write something down turns out to be a better reason than compliance.

The part nobody selling a template leads with

At standard tier, the Act asks you to have public protection procedures and to notify the regulator. It does not ask you to produce a documented risk assessment, and it does not ask you to file a written plan with anybody. The documentation duties sit in the enhanced tier, which applies from 800 people — and never applies to places of worship or education settings at all.

So if you are a 240-capacity hall, nothing obliges you to hold a folder of procedures. Any supplier implying otherwise is describing the enhanced tier, or selling you something.

Then why write anything down?

Three reasons, none of them legal:

• Agreement. “We’d get everyone out” is not a plan until two trustees agree on which door, and discover they disagreed.
• Handover. Committees turn over. The person who knows which fire door sticks will not be here in three years.
• Evidence. If anything ever goes wrong, “we thought about this and here is what we agreed” is a materially better position than a recollection.

That is the honest case. It is about the building and the people in it, not about satisfying an inspector who is not coming.

The four things a procedure set has to decide

Whatever you write, it earns its place only if it answers these. Everything else is padding.

• Evacuation — getting people out. Which exits, to which assembly point, and the second assembly point for when the first is where the problem is.
• Invacuation — bringing people in and away from glass, because the danger is outside. Which room, and what you say to stop people wandering off to their cars.
• Lockdown — securing the place against someone trying to reach you. Which doors lock from the inside, and which do not.
• Communication — how you tell everyone, in a building with no PA and patchy signal, and how you reach the people who are not in the room.

Why a generic template usually fails

Download one and you will find the structure is fine. The problem is that every sentence that would make it useful has been replaced by a blank: [VENUE NAME], [ASSEMBLY POINT], [RESPONSIBLE PERSON].

Those blanks are not clerical. Filling them in is the work, because it means deciding that the glazed south wall is the wrong side of the hall to shelter against, that two of your three doors do not lock from the inside, and that the fire door behind the stage opens onto the field where you would send everybody. A template cannot know any of that, so it cannot decide it for you.

The failure mode is a folder that reads beautifully and describes a building nobody recognises. It is worse than nothing, because it feels finished.

What a good set looks like

• It names your doors, rooms and assembly point, not [VENUE NAME].
• It says the difficult things — which exits do not lock, where the glass is, where the signal fails.
• It is short enough that a volunteer will read it before an event.
• It contains words you would actually say out loud, so nobody has to compose a sentence in a crisis.
• It has a date, and a named person who agreed it.

Doing it yourself

You can absolutely write this yourself, and if you have someone on the committee who will sit down for an evening with a floor plan, that is a perfectly good answer. The free ProtectUK guidance and its ACT Awareness e-learning cost nothing and are genuinely well made. Start from your building rather than from a blank form, and you will end up somewhere sensible.