Martyn's Law and Your Office: 12 Scope Tests and the Schedule 1 Triggers
Since the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 received Royal Assent, the question we are asked most often by office-based clients is some version of the same thing: does this apply to us.
Here is the answer most of them are not expecting. Offices are not a specified use. Schedule 1 to the Act lists the uses that bring premises into scope, and office premises do not appear anywhere in it. A pure office building, whatever its headcount, is outside Martyn's Law.
That is good news, and it is also where the care is needed, because the test is not about what your organisation does. It is about what the building is wholly or mainly used for, and a surprising number of ordinary office and campus estates contain something on the list. A hireable conference floor. A ground-floor café open to the street. An archive the public can visit. A university lecture block.
So the useful exercise is not asking whether you are a qualifying organisation. It is walking the estate against Schedule 1. Here are twelve tests, drawn from the Act itself.
The four-part scope test
1. It has to be a building. Section 2(2)(a) requires the premises to consist of a building, or a building and other land, and defines building to include part of a building or a group of buildings.
That definition does real work in both directions. Part of a building can qualify on its own, and a campus of several buildings can be treated as a group.
2. Wholly or mainly used for a Schedule 1 use. Section 2(2)(b) requires the premises to be wholly or mainly used for one or more of the uses in Schedule 1.
The words to hold on to are wholly or mainly. A building that is overwhelmingly offices with one incidental listed use is in a different position from a building whose main use is on the list. This is a judgement, it should be recorded, and it is the judgement that most estates have not yet written down.
3. The 200 test counts people connected to the listed use, not the building. Section 2(2)(c) asks whether it is reasonable to expect that, from time to time, 200 or more individuals may be present at the same time in connection with the Schedule 1 use.
Read that carefully, because it is the most misunderstood provision in the Act. The threshold is not total building occupancy. A firm with 600 staff and a 150-seat hireable conference suite does not reach 200 by adding its workforce to the audience. The question is how many are present in connection with the qualifying use.
4. Then the tier, at 800. Section 2(3) makes premises enhanced duty premises where it is reasonable to expect 800 or more individuals present at the same time in connection with the listed uses, and standard duty premises in every other qualifying case. Section 2(4) adds that Schedule 1 may make premises enhanced or standard in certain cases regardless of those thresholds, and premises described in Part 1 of Schedule 2 are excluded altogether.
The Schedule 1 uses that catch an office or campus estate
Now the walk round. These are the entries in Schedule 1 most likely to appear inside an estate that thinks of itself as offices.
5. An event venue for hire, exhibition hall or conference centre. The most common trigger by a wide margin. Plenty of law firms, insurers and professional practices have a top-floor events space, an auditorium or a conference suite that is let out or used for client events. Our note on conferences and events covers the duties that already attach to running them.
6. Retail, or food and drink consumed on the premises. Schedule 1 covers the retail sale of goods and the provision of services mainly to visiting members of the public, and separately the sale of food or drink for consumption on the premises. A staff restaurant closed to the public is a different thing from a ground-floor café with a street door.
7. A library, museum, gallery or archive. The entry covers use as a library, museum or gallery where admission is mainly for visitors, and extends to archives. For universities, professional institutes and membership bodies with a publicly accessible collection, this is worth checking.
8. Public authority premises serving visiting members of the public. Use by a public authority to provide facilities or services to visiting members of the public is a specified use in its own right. A council building, a public-facing service point or a visitor-facing arm of a public body is caught by this entry even where nothing else on the list applies.
9. Education, at every level, including some student residences. Schedule 1 covers childcare and early years provision, primary and secondary education, further education and 16 to 19 academies, and higher education institutions including student residences managed by the institution.
For a university the estate has to be assessed building by building, and the residences question is most often missed. Our note on Martyn's Law for schools, colleges and universities deals with the sector in depth.
10. Paying customers and members still count as visitors. A short interpretation provision in Schedule 1 is worth knowing: access can still count as visitor access even where it is limited to paying customers, ticket holders or club members.
So a members-only space, a ticketed event or a subscriber library does not fall outside the Act simply because entry is restricted. If you assumed a private members arrangement put you outside scope, that assumption needs testing.
Premises inside premises, and who co-ordinates
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11. Qualifying premises inside other qualifying premises. Section 2(5) deals with the nesting problem directly. Where qualifying premises form part of other qualifying premises, and the same person is responsible for two or more of them, they are treated as one set of qualifying premises. Otherwise Part 1 applies to each set separately.
This is the multi-let question in statutory form, and it will be familiar to anyone who has worked through the same boundary problem in fire safety.
12. Co-ordination between responsible persons, and a duty on whoever else has control. Section 8 sets out three situations. Where more than one person is responsible for qualifying premises, they must co-ordinate with each other so far as is reasonably practicable. Where qualifying premises form part of other qualifying premises, those responsible for each must co-ordinate in the same way.
And the third limb is the one landlords and managing agents should read. Where a person is not responsible for enhanced duty premises but has control of the premises to any other extent, that person must co-operate so far as is reasonably practicable with the responsible person, so that the responsible person can meet their requirements.
What the Act actually asks for, in its own words
Worth a short detour, because the language everyone uses is not the language of the statute.
The industry shorthand for the standard tier is evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication. Section 5 does not use the words invacuation or lockdown at all. It requires the responsible person, so far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure suitable public protection procedures are in place to reduce the risk of physical harm if a terrorist act occurs on the premises or in the immediate vicinity. The procedures are for staff and others working there to follow where they have reason to suspect a terrorist act is occurring or about to occur, and they cover:
- evacuating individuals from the premises
- moving individuals within the premises to a place where there is less risk of physical harm
- preventing individuals from entering or leaving
- providing information to individuals on the premises
Four functional procedures, no jargon, and all qualified by reasonable practicability. For the enhanced tier the Act adds public protection measures under section 6, documenting compliance under section 7, notification under section 9 and designating a senior individual under section 10.
The second and third of those four can point the opposite way to an evacuation, so they will interact directly with your fire strategy. That tension is the real planning work, and it belongs alongside your fire risk assessment rather than in a separate security file. Our notes on fire exits and escape routes and personal emergency evacuation plans cover the arrangements that must be reconciled.
The twelve, as a walk round
| Test | Source | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| Is it a building, or part, or a group | s2(2)(a) | The unit you are assessing |
| Wholly or mainly a Schedule 1 use | s2(2)(b) | The judgement, in writing |
| 200+ in connection with that use | s2(2)(c) | How you counted, and who |
| 800+ means enhanced duty | s2(3), (4) | Tier, and any Schedule 1 override |
| Event venue, exhibition hall, conference centre | Sch 1 | Hire arrangements and capacity |
| Retail, or food and drink on the premises | Sch 1 | Whether the public can walk in |
| Library, museum, gallery, archive | Sch 1 | Public admission arrangements |
| Public authority serving visiting public | Sch 1 | Which buildings and which services |
| Education, including managed residences | Sch 1 | Building by building |
| Members and ticket holders still count | Sch 1 | Any assumed private exemption |
| Premises inside other premises | s2(5) | Who is responsible for each |
| Co-ordination, and the control duty | s8 | The arrangement, in writing |
Rows two, three and ten are where the mistakes are. The first two because they are judgements nobody has recorded, and the third because a members-only or ticketed arrangement feels like it ought to be outside.
Holding this per building, with the capacity basis, the tier, the responsible person and the co-ordination arrangement in one place, is a practical case for health and safety consultants and software working as one system rather than two. Periodic health and safety audits should now ask one extra question: which of our buildings has a Schedule 1 use in it, and who wrote that down.
The international dimension for multi-country estates
Groups with premises in several countries meet a pattern here that is the reverse of the one we usually describe.
Most regimes we work across converge on method and diverge on verification. Protective security legislation for publicly accessible locations does the opposite: the underlying thinking is broadly shared, but the legal obligation is not. Several countries address the same risk through guidance, policing relationships and venue licensing rather than a statute with tiers, a regulator and penalty notices.
The consequence for a group standard is specific. The protective measures export well, and a group can hold one approach to procedures, staff awareness and co-ordination with neighbours. The scope test does not export at all, because it is built from a British schedule of uses and two British thresholds. So apply your own standard everywhere and the statutory test only where the statute reaches.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite is not a counter-terrorism consultancy and we do not write security plans. What our health and safety consultants do is the part that comes first: walk the buildings against Schedule 1, record the wholly-or-mainly judgement and the capacity basis, identify which premises sit inside other premises, and establish the responsible person for each. That is also the part that decides whether anything else is needed at all. We support 1,500+ businesses in 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
We work extensively with office-based, legal, insurance, education and property and real estate clients, which cover almost every way an office estate ends up with a Schedule 1 use in it. Our note on Martyn's Law explained sets out the wider framework, and visitors and reception covers the duties already owed to people who walk in.
For multi-country groups, our global health and safety consultants keep the protective approach consistent while applying the statutory test only where it bites, and our international health and safety consultants can tell you which of your sites are inside a comparable regime.
Do one thing this week. List every building in the estate and mark the ones containing a hireable event space, a public-facing café or shop, a visitable library or archive, or any education use. Then book a free gap analysis and we will tell you in one call which of them the Act reaches.
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Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
