Preparing for Martyn’s Law: Why Communication Will Define School Safety

Martyn’s Law: An Expert’s View on School Communication

Martyn’s Law comes into force from around April 2027, and it’s tempting to treat that date as the thing that matters. It isn’t, not really. The schools getting the most out of this legislation are the ones using it as a reason to test whether their evacuation, invacuation and lockdown plans would actually work under pressure, not just whether they exist on paper.

What Martyn’s Law asks of your school

Martyn’s Law, formally the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, requires premises where 200-799 people may be present at the same time, staff, pupils and visitors combined, to have basic procedures in place to reduce harm in the event of a terrorist attack. For the full picture of who’s in scope and which tier applies, see our complete guide to Martyn’s Law for schools and colleges. The short version: every UK school with more than 200 people is in scope, and everyone sits in the Standard Tier by default.

As counter-terrorism expert Lisa Broad put it in our webinar on the subject:

“All schools sit within the standard tier, even those with thousands of students.”

The Musts and the Shoulds

The statutory duty itself is narrower than most schools expect. Standard Tier premises must notify the Security Industry Authority (SIA) of who their responsible person is, have documented procedures covering evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication, and make sure those procedures are reasonably practicable and genuinely reduce risk.

Everything else, staff actually knowing the plan, testing it regularly, keeping a record of what’s been reviewed and improved, is technically a “should” rather than a “must”. Lisa Broad’s advice is to treat the shoulds as musts anyway: a plan nobody has tested or trained on is not much of a plan.

Three things every school should do right now

Review your procedures through a different lens. Most schools already have evacuation and lockdown procedures. Fewer have reviewed them specifically against a terrorism scenario, which raises different questions to a fire: where responsibility sits if senior leaders are unreachable, how staff communicate mid-incident if the plan needs to change, whether outdoor spaces like car parks and drop-off points are covered, and how a lockdown is verified if the fire alarm goes off at the same time.

Treat communication as its own requirement, not an add-on. Communication is one of the four procedures Martyn’s Law names specifically, not a supporting detail. Worth testing directly: can an alert be triggered from more than one location? Can staff outside the main building, on playing fields or in car parks, receive it? Is there a way to communicate silently, without alerting whoever poses the threat? Can a change in the threat picture reach every member of staff instantly?

Start building the evidence trail now. Compliance doesn’t require a perfect system on day one. It does require being able to show what’s been reviewed, what gaps were found, and what’s being done about them. Schools that start that record now will find it far easier to demonstrate reasonable practicability later than schools that wait.

Effective communication saves lives. 

This was a key message from counter-terrorism specialist Lisa Broad, during a recent Vivi Safer Schools webinar. While legislation is still evolving, Lisa made one principle perfectly clear: when an incident occurs, schools will only be able to act on their plans if they can communicate quickly and clearly. 

Compliance isn’t the goal — preparedness is 

Martyn’s Law has prompted understandable questions from school leaders: What exactly do we need to do? How will it be enforced? What will inspectors want to see? 

Lisa offered a calm, practical perspective: 

“Don’t get lost in compliance. Focus on making sure your plans would actually work in a real incident — that’s what ultimately protects people.” 

At its core, Martyn’s Law expects schools to demonstrate three capabilities: 

• Evacuation 

• Invacuation and lockdown 

• Site-wide communication 

Many schools already have evacuation procedures for fire. But Lisa urged leaders to review every plan through a new lens — the lens of intentional harm. That means considering more complex scenarios: bomb threats, hostile intruders, aggressive visitors, or coordinated attacks designed to exploit standard evacuation routines. 

Lockdown is only as good as your ability to signal it 

Lockdown is the area schools find most challenging. Lisa broke it down simply using three levels: 

These principles are clear. But all of them rely on one critical question: 

How will you alert your staff and students, fast, from anywhere on site? 

This is where communication planning becomes essential. Traditional fire alarm systems won’t differentiate between scenarios. Sending an all-staff email isn’t fast or visible enough. Relying on a single trigger point in the school office creates a dangerous single point of failure. 

Schools need to ensure they can: 

• Trigger alerts from multiple locations 

• Reach staff inside and outside the building 

• Share different messages for different incidents 

• Maintain two-way communication throughout an incident 

Communication isn’t a device — it’s a safety strategy 

Schools often jump straight to tools, but Lisa urged leaders to start with strategy: 

• What message must every person receive — instantly — in a lockdown? 

• How do you make instructions impossible to misinterpret? 

• How do you continue communicating during a lockdown? 

• How do staff without radios or authority trigger an alert? 

• What happens if the incident begins away from reception? 

Technology should support these decisions — not define them. 

Three things every school should do right now

Review your procedures through a different lens. Most schools already have evacuation and lockdown procedures. Fewer have reviewed them specifically against a terrorism scenario, which raises different questions to a fire: where responsibility sits if senior leaders are unreachable, how staff communicate mid-incident if the plan needs to change, whether outdoor spaces like car parks and drop-off points are covered, and how a lockdown is verified if the fire alarm goes off at the same time.

Treat communication as its own requirement, not an add-on. Communication is one of the four procedures Martyn’s Law names specifically, not a supporting detail. Worth testing directly: can an alert be triggered from more than one location? Can staff outside the main building, on playing fields or in car parks, receive it? Is there a way to communicate silently, without alerting whoever poses the threat? Can a change in the threat picture reach every member of staff instantly?

Start building the evidence trail now. Compliance doesn’t require a perfect system on day one. It does require being able to show what’s been reviewed, what gaps were found, and what’s being done about them. Schools that start that record now will find it far easier to demonstrate reasonable practicability later than schools that wait.

A note on third-party hirers and events

If your school hires out halls, sports facilities or classrooms outside the school day, Martyn’s Law responsibility doesn’t transfer with the booking. Your school remains responsible for compliance regardless of who’s using the building or how many of your own staff are present, so hire agreements should set out what’s expected of the hirer as clearly as they set out anything else.

The mindset shift: preparedness, not just compliance

It’s worth returning to Lisa Broad’s core point from the webinar: “Don’t get lost in compliance. Focus on making sure your plans would actually work.” A school that treats Martyn’s Law as a box-ticking exercise will produce a document. A school that treats it as a chance to pressure-test its actual response will produce something far more useful. As Lisa put it: “This isn’t about being afraid. It’s about being prepared.”

Helpful free resources

• ProtectUK, the counter-terrorism policing platform, for general guidance.
• ACT for Education, free e-learning built with the Department for Education.
• NPSA guidance for education settings on security-minded communication.

How Vivi helps schools meet their Martyn’s Law communication obligations

Vivi is the campus operating system for schools. For the communication requirement specifically, that means one way to trigger evacuation, invacuation and lockdown alerts across every display in the building, from more than one location, with Vivi Device Alerts extending that to a full-screen alert on every staff device and a record of who has acknowledged it. For schools working on the third thing on the list above, building the evidence trail, that acknowledgement record is exactly the kind of documentation Martyn’s Law asks for.

Read our complete guide to Martyn’s Law for schools and colleges for the full picture, request a demo to see how Vivi supports your school’s communication requirements, or watch the full recording of our Martyn’s Law webinar with Lisa Broad.

Schedule a chat with us today.