Proposed changes to the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill: What employers need to know

What do the changes mean for UK employers, venue operators and public-facing premises.

The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (“the Bill”) also referred to as Martyn’s Law, is due to become law at some point this year. Whilst full guidance has not yet been provided, it is clear that the Bill will impose additional obligations on business owners who fall into its scope.

The Bill’s purpose is to ensure that the public are adequately protected from a Terrorist act. The Bill arose following the devasting Manchester Arena attack which occurred in 2017 and is named after one of the victims of this attack.

You may be wondering what this Bill has to do with employment law, and whilst it is not directly related, the obligations will require business owners (who it applies to) to take additional health and safety steps as well as provide additional training to employees.

Who will the Bill apply to?

The Bill will place an additional duty on any space which can be accessed by the public and those who are responsible for the public space or venue

The Bill sets out that premises or an event which meets the required criteria (set out below) will be subject to the additional obligations.

The Bill sets out that what a “qualifying premises” and a “qualifying event” are, and you can obtain further detail from the Bill, which can be accessed here: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3765

However, it appears that if the premises/ event is held in a building with or without land, which is used “wholly or mainly” for one of the reasons set out within the Bill, these include retail shops, sale of food and drink, entertainment venues, libraries, and sports grounds to name a few, and the premises could reasonably be expected to have 200 people inside at any one time, it is likely the Bill will apply.

In the circumstances, pubs, hotels, retail shops/outlets, schools, theatres, cinemas are some of the businesses which will likely be impacted by the Bill.

Similarly, an event will likely be covered, if it takes place in a building and or land (such as a farm or park), the public have access to it to attend the event, at least 800 people could attend the event at any one time, and someone will be employed/engaged by the business to control access.

Obligations

The obligations that will be placed on business/individuals who operate a qualified premises and/or event will vary depending on whether they fall into the standard duty tier (this is where 200 people or more will be in attendance) or the enhanced duty tier.

Standard Duty Tier

Under the standard duty tier, the obligations would include:

• Notifying the Security Industry Authority when they became responsible for a premises and when they cease being responsible for a premises.

• Ensure that there is an individual responsible for public protection. This would include ensuring, as far as possible, that appropriate procedures were implemented to ensure the public’s safety at the premises. The individual appointed to this role would need to be, in my view, someone senior and they would need to be provided with additional training to ensure they are able to carry out this role.

• Ensure an evacuation plan is in place. Similar to that you would in the event of a fire.

• Ensure an invacuation plan is in place, and there are safe places within the premises the public could be taken if required.

• Ensure a lockdown plan is in place to restrict an attacker gaining entry to the premises.

• Ensure a communication plan is in place, setting out how individuals will be alerted to any potential danger/threat within the premises or event.

Enhanced Duty Tier

For businesses which fall into the enhanced duty tier (this is where the event will have 800 people or more in attendance), they will be required to take all of the steps in the standard duty tier together with enhanced steps such as:

• Measures to ensure the premises/event and surrounding area can be monitored. This will likely involve ensuring adequate CCTV is in place.

• Measures which allow the movement of the individuals attending the premises/event can be controlled. This may include implementing a one-way system or only allowing people to entre or exit through certain doors or restricting access to certain areas within the premises/event.

• Measures to enable the sharing of security information. This may include ensuring staff are trained on who to contact in the event they suspect an act of terrorism may occur.

The steps taken will depend on each premises and event, as the Bill recognises what would work for one premises/event may not work for another. As such, the measures implemented need only be what is reasonably practicable.

Additional guidance will likely be published once the Bill receives royal assent, and this will likely assist in determining what would be considered reasonably practicable.

Action

Whilst the obligations introduced by the Bill have not yet come into effect, if you are likely to be impacted by the changes, I would recommend you start to consider how you will comply with the obligations now. This could include preparing risk assessment and procedures, as well as considering the additional training which staff will require. Your health and safety policies and procedures will also need to be updated.

Even if your venue or event does not fall into the mandatory requirements set out above it would of course be good practice to ensure that you take adequate steps to safeguard your employees, customers and visitors from the type of incident Martyn’s Law is designed to mitigate.