A planning tool for standard tier premises now sets out how to approach evacuation, lockdown, communication and invacuation procedures. A separate compliance document template for enhanced tier premises and events asks organisations to record vulnerability assessments alongside their monitoring, movement of people, physical security and information security measures. Before this week, the material available to anyone preparing for the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 consisted of the Home Office’s statutory guidance and two scope-checking flowcharts on ProtectUK.

Laura Gibb, the SIA’s executive director for Martyn’s Law, called the tools “a first step,” and said the organisation wants feedback from the premises and events representatives who helped shape them before finalising the approach. Responses are open until 23 December.

A lot of organisations are still working out where they land in the tiering system that decides who this applies to. Premises or events expecting between 200 and 799 people on site at the same time, on a recurring basis, sit in the standard tier. They need to appoint a responsible person, notify the SIA, and have public protection procedures in place; they don’t have to submit anything unless asked. Venues and events expecting 800 or more fall into the enhanced tier, where the duty extends to documenting those procedures and sending that documentation to the SIA. Places of worship, childcare providers and some education settings stay in the standard tier even above the 800 threshold; the Act makes that carve-out explicit.

For a lot of workplace and facilities teams, the live question is which tier a given building falls into, and who within it actually holds the duty. In a multi-occupier office block, a shopping centre with several operators, or a mixed-use estate with a conference centre attached to an office floor, scope depends on how the premises is used and who controls access. There is rarely one obvious owner. The SIA’s planning tool does not settle that question by itself, but a document that forces an organisation to work through evacuation, lockdown and communication procedures tends to surface the ownership question faster than a guidance PDF does.

Martyn’s Law is still on course to come into force in spring 2027. The SIA’s final statutory guidance, consulted on between April and June this year, is due in autumn 2026, and the notification portal organisations will use to register with the SIA is being tested with volunteers from early 2027. A commencement date eighteen months out looks distant until a board sign-off process, a physical security budget and a staff training programme are added to the timeline, at which point the gap between reading the guidance and having something ready to show an inspector narrows considerably.

The practical starting point for most organisations now is the scope question: establishing, premises by premises, whether 200 or 800 is the realistic number on a normal day, who within a shared building is the responsible person, and what that means for the next conversation with security contractors, landlords or co-occupiers. The tools published this week, and the ProtectUK flowcharts that sit alongside them, are built for exactly that conversation.

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