Martyn's Law readiness checklist for UK schools

What Standard tier actually shifts

Martyn’s Law places an enhanced tier of duty on qualifying publicly accessible locations. Standard tier applies to premises that meet a defined capacity threshold — for a school, the test is whether the venue can host 200 or more attendees at a time across the qualifying event types you run (a parents’ evening open to the wider community, a large sports day, a year-group production, a school-hire event). Once you cross the threshold, the duty is operational, not aspirational: documented procedures, named ownership, rehearsed drills, and a defensible trail of evidence.

The legal text frames the duty around “reasonably practicable” steps. In practice, that means an inspector — or, in the worst case, a coroner — will look for evidence of a working system: who is in charge, what they have drilled, what they would do at 14:32 on a Wednesday, and where that lives in your records. A folder of policies on a shared drive does not meet the test. A documented rehearsal, a debriefed drill, a signed-off communications procedure does.

Most schools will not need a counter-terrorism plan that reads like a military doctrine. They do need consistent rehearsal, named ownership, and comms that work on the day — which is exactly what this checklist is built around.

Appointing the responsible person

The single highest-leverage move is putting one named individualon the accountable line for Martyn’s Law readiness. In a primary school that’s usually the headteacher. In a secondary school, often an assistant head or operations lead with a direct line to the head. Whoever it is, the ownership must be written into the job description, appear on the organisational chart, and be paired with a named deputy who can step in during absence, on inset days, or at evening events.

The responsible person owns four things:

• The procedure set. Evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, communications. Each is a living document with a version number and an owner.
• The drill calendar. One full-scale evacuation a year, one lockdown a year, table-top invacuation exercises each term, and after every drill a debrief note plus a lessons-learned write-up.
• The communications tree. Who calls whom, on what number, in what order, with what script.
• The evidence pack.Date-stamped records for every drill, every debrief, every updated procedure — the folder you would hand an inspector or your chair of governors in a single sitting.

The responsible person is also the consistent single point of contact for your local CTSA. CTSAs are not regulators; they are advisers and they will speak to you. Building that relationship now means the first call on the day of an incident is to someone who already knows your site, your procedures and your staff.

Evacuation drills

Evacuation is the procedure most schools already rehearse as a fire drill, and most of that practice transfers directly. The added Martyn’s Law layer is rehearsal against an assumed credible threat, not a fire or a power cut. Pick a plausible scenario — an unaccompanied adult reported in the year-4 corridor, a credible social-media threat, an unattended package in reception, a hostile-vehicle concern at the parent gate — and rehearse the response.

The cadence that holds up to inspection: a single evacuation drill each term (four across the year), at least one of which is a full building-and-site evacuation to the assembly point with a recorded time-to-clear. The annual drill cycle should also exercise an alternative assembly point so staff and pupils are not locked into a single muscle-memory route.

What to record, every time: the date, the scenario, the time to clear the assembly point, the roll-call result (children, staff, visitors), any access issues observed (a propped-open fire door, a blocked route, a member of staff who did not hear the signal), and a dated lessons-learned note that names the action and the owner. Lookpost can inventory these templates for you — but a paper file in the head’s office is fine if it is consistently kept.

Invacuation (“stay put”) drills

Invacuation is the right call when the threat is external and the safest action is to keep people inside, away from doors and windows, with teaching staff continuing to supervise. It is also the call most commonly confused with lockdown, so rehearsing the distinction is itself the drill.

The drill pattern: a verbal cue distinct from the fire alarm and from the lockdown signal (a coded PA message, a radio tone, a staff-room alert), an instruction to move away from external doors and ground-floor windows, a register taken silently in each classroom, comms with SLT by radio or in-person messenger, and a hold until the all-clear. Parents should be told that invacuation drills are planned and why, so a Wednesday afternoon invacuation does not generate a panic on the school gate.

Rehearse invacuation at least once a term; treat the first one of the year as a announced drill so staff learn the signal and parents learn the pattern, then move to unannounced for the spring and summer terms.

Lockdown drills

Lockdown is the right call when the threat is internal— an intruder inside the building, an escalating incident in the corridors. Most schools need to rehearse both partial lockdown (a contained external threat, classroom doors shut, business as usual, outside activity paused) and full lockdown (an internal intruder, doors locked and barricaded, lights off, pupils silent, pupils moved away from sight-lines through glass).

For pupils, age-appropriate script discipline matters. Younger pupils should hear the drill framed as a practice — straws and a story about keeping safe. Older pupils can be told more directly. In either case, the staff script needs to be rehearsed and short: what to say, what not to say, when to lock, when to move, when to call 999.

The triggers for invoking lockdown need to be defined and known. A credible 999 call, a confirmed intruder sighting from CCTV, a physical lock-out by an aggressive individual at the gate, a credible social-media threat against the school. Each trigger should name who can call it (typically the head or deputy, with a fallback to any member of SLT) and how the signal goes out. Pair the trigger list with a recorded debrief for every actual or attempted invocation.

Communication procedures

A working communications procedure is what separates a rehearsed drill from a working system. The most common single failure mode is comms: a school that knows the right action but cannot get the message out, cannot reach the lead, or cannot tell parents the site is safe. Build three trees.

Internal — staff and pupils. A primary channel (whole-school PA or radio) and a backup (whatsApp-based or app-based staff group, used sparingly so it remains reliable). The primary staff channel should not be a single narrow system: pair a PA with two-way radios for SLT and with a phone-tree fallback for staff on duty at the gate or in the early-years garden.

External — parents.A short, rehearsed script for each major incident type, sent via the school’s normal parent-comms channel (SMS or app). The script has a date-stamped, version-controlled version on file. Parents are told the school is safe, the school is operating a holding pattern, collection will be from a named gate with a named procedure, and no further updates are expected for a defined period (e.g. “next update at 16:30”).

External — partners.A single, rehearsed escalation route to your local police (via 999), your local authority (via the named school-comms lead), your neighbouring sites (so a nearby school is not surprised by your hold-pattern), and your local CTSA. The phone numbers and named contacts live in a one-page document on the wall in the head’s office, in the deputy’s contact card, and in the SLT’s phones.

Rehearse the script. Winging it on the day is the failure mode the regulator will note.

Keeping the procedures living

A documented set of procedures is what an inspector will read; a living set is what will work on the day. The difference is the rhythm of review, the governance around it, and the evidence folder.

Schedule a single review at the start of each term, owned by the responsible person. The review covers: drill outcomes from the previous term, lessons learned notes, any change in staff or site layout, any change in the local-authority or police advice, and any change in the policy corpus (safeguarding, PREVENT, health and safety). The review writes one dated note and updates the version-controlled procedures. That is the minimum cadence.

The chair of governors (or the safeguarding governor in a smaller school) reads the procedures once a term and signs off on the evidence folder. The governor oversight is not bureaucratic — it is the second pair of eyes that catches the procedure that has drifted out of date.

The evidence pack itself should be a single folder — paper or digital — with: the current procedures (each with a version number and a date), a logged drill record per drill, debrief notes per drill, the calendar of planned drills for the year, the review notes, named ownership and deputies, and the partner-contact sheet. It is the file you would hand an inspector in a single sitting. If you cannot lay your hands on it in five minutes, the system is not yet what the regulator will accept.

Lookpost will keep this folder living for you — dramatised or paper, the pattern is the same.