Martyn’s Law for village halls

If you are on a village hall committee, you have probably heard the words “Martyn’s Law” at a meeting, felt a jolt of worry, and heard nothing useful since. This guide is the straight answer: whether it applies to your hall, what it asks of you if it does, and — the part nobody says out loud — what it does not ask of you.

Does it apply to your hall at all?

Only one number decides it: the number of people who could reasonably be expected in the building at the same time, on your busiest realistic day.

For a typical village hall that means the harvest supper, the pantomime, the Christmas fair, the polling station, or a wedding reception — whichever of those fills the place most fully. If your absolute maximum is 150 people including the volunteers behind the tea urn, the Act does not apply to you, and no amount of anybody’s consultancy can make it apply to you.

If your busiest day is 240 people, you are in the standard tier. That is the tier the overwhelming majority of halls land in, and it is the tier this law was deliberately written to keep light.

“Reasonably expected” — what does that actually mean?

It is not tickets sold. It is not the number on your fire certificate, which is a maximum permitted, and is usually higher than anything that has happened in the hall this century. It is your honest answer to: on the busiest day this hall has, how many bodies are in the building at once?

Two things committees commonly get wrong, in opposite directions:

• Forgetting the helpers. Staff and volunteers count. Twenty people running a fête are twenty people.
• Using the fire figure because it feels safer. It is not safer. It is just wrong, and it may put you in scope of duties that do not apply to you.

If you are genuinely torn between two numbers, take the higher one and move on. The difference between 190 and 210 is worth ten minutes of committee discussion, not ten months of anxiety.

What the standard tier actually asks for

Two things. That is the whole of it.

1. Tell the regulator you exist. The Security Industry Authority is the regulator for Martyn’s Law. Qualifying premises need to notify them — who the premises are, and who is responsible for them. It is a registration, not an application: nobody grants you permission, and nobody inspects you as a result of doing it.
2. Have public protection procedures — what your people would do in an emergency. The Act names four kinds: evacuation (getting everybody out), invacuation (bringing everybody in and shutting the building), lockdown (securing the building against someone dangerous) and communication (how the alarm is raised and how you talk to the emergency services).

The procedures must be “appropriate and reasonably practicable” for your premises. For a village hall run by volunteers, reasonably practicable means exactly what it sounds like: sensible, cheap, and achievable by ordinary people on a Saturday. It does not mean a security team, a barrier, or a bag search.

What it does not ask for — and we would rather tell you

At the standard tier, the law does not require you to buy any physical security equipment. It does not require you to employ anybody. It does not require a risk assessment in the way the enhanced tier does. And — the honest one — it does not require you to write your procedures down.

We sell a pack that writes them down, so we have every commercial reason not to tell you that. We are telling you anyway, because you will find out, and because it is the truth. Here is why committees choose to document them regardless:

• A procedure that lives in one person’s head is a procedure that leaves when they do — and village hall committees turn over constantly.
• If the regulator ever does ask what your procedures are, “they are written down, adopted and dated, and here they are” is a two-minute conversation. “We all know what we would do” is a longer one.
• Your volunteers cannot follow a plan they have never seen. Writing it down is how you brief the eighteen-year-old helping on the door for the first time.

A realistic plan for a hall committee

1. Settle the number. Ten minutes at the next meeting. Minute it — that alone is evidence you took the duty seriously.
2. If you are under 200, minute that too, and stop. Come back to it if you start hiring the hall out for bigger events.
3. If you are in scope, agree who the responsible person is. It is almost always the management committee, with the chair as its named contact. Use a role email (chair@, bookings@) — people leave, roles do not.
4. Walk the building. Where are the exits? Where does each one lead? Where would people gather if they had to leave — and where would they gather if that place was the problem? This walk is worth more than any document, and it is free.
5. Write the four procedures down and adopt them formally at a meeting. One line in the minutes.
6. Brief your volunteers before big events. Ten minutes while the tea goes round. Name three people on the day: who makes the announcement, who rings 999, who checks the toilets and the kitchen.
7. Notify the SIA when the process opens, and keep the acknowledgement.

The one thing worth doing this month

Not paperwork. Take three of your trustees around the hall and answer one question out loud: if the problem were outside the front door, where would we send 200 people instead? Most halls have never asked it. It takes fifteen minutes, it costs nothing, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.