Quiet stretch for headlines, which is the right moment to watch the slow movers. Two changes are heading for the control room floor, and both reach you before they reach the people above you: Martyn’s Law enforcement is being finalised, and the SIA is rewriting what a licence is worth. This one is practical. What to do now, not a summary of the law.
🗞️ THIS WEEK IN UK SECURITY
Two Threads That Reach the Floor First
Two regulatory threads are moving, and both land on the people who run sites and rosters.
First, Martyn’s Law. The SIA is the regulator for the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. Its enforcement guidance went to consultation, which closed on 12 June, and the outcome is still pending. The Act carries a 24-month runway from Royal Assent, so the regime bites around spring 2027.
Second, the SIA licence overhaul. The final qualification specifications publish across this summer, and the new qualifications become mandatory for new applicants in spring 2027.
Operationally, that means the work landing on you is not the law itself but the preparation for it, and the sites that start early are the ones that will not be scrambling when the regulator turns up. The detail that matters for your week is below, in Compliance Corner and Worth Knowing.
Bottom line: neither is finished yet, and that is exactly why now is the time to build, not wait.
📋 COMPLIANCE CORNER
Martyn’s Law: Build It Now, While the Detail Is Still in Draft
You do not need the final enforcement guidance to start. The framework is already set. Standard tier covers premises with a capacity of 200 to 799 people. Enhanced tier is 800 and above.
Four moves you can make now. One, classify your premises tier by capacity. Two, identify and name the responsible person for the premises. Three, review and document the four public protection procedures: evacuation, invacuation (moving people to safety inside), lockdown, and communication. Four, for standard tier, draft the security plan and put staff through basic terrorism-protection awareness training; enhanced tier adds further protective-measures documentation.
The test the responsible person has to meet is what is appropriate and reasonably practicable to reduce the risk of physical harm. None of that waits on the final guidance.
Fix: classify your tier and name your responsible person this week. Those two decisions unlock everything else.
🔧 OPERATIONAL TIP
One Login Per Officer
A site I worked years ago ran every patrol off one shared PIN. Completion looked fine, but no one could see who skipped tags or cut the route. We switched to an individual PIN per officer. Completion dipped first, because we were finally seeing the misses the shared login hid, then climbed as every scan had a name on it.
Fix: one login per officer. A shared PIN hides the corner-cutters.
🔗 WORTH KNOWING
The licence-linked qualifications are being rewritten end to end. Final specs land this summer and turn mandatory for new applicants in spring 2027, shifting toward physical intervention, stop and search, and counter-terror content aligned to Martyn’s Law. Track the spec drop.
Thanks for reading. If you found this useful, forward it to one colleague who would benefit. That is how this grows.
Until next Tuesday.
Documents I use on shift: the Daily Occurrence Book and the Incident Report Form. BS 7499 aligned, edit and ship same day. Both from SecureDocUK.
Andras
Control Room Supervisor & Deputy Security Operations Manager
The Control Room