The Control Room — Issue 4

Welcome back. Four issues in. Quiet news week on the surface, but the regulatory floor is moving — Martyn’s Law is being built into a working enforcement function, and there’s a fresh route for raising serious concerns. Plus a real incident from this week’s shift that’s worth your five minutes. Straight in.

The SIA has confirmed the architecture for how it will regulate the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 — Martyn’s Law. Laura Gibb, the SIA’s Executive Director for Martyn’s Law, has set out how the new regulatory function is being built, with full enforcement expected in 2027. April’s statutory guidance is already live, and the consultation on Section 12 guidance is open right now.

What this actually means: the body that licenses you is now also the body that will inspect your venue’s counter-terrorism readiness. Two regulatory hats, same regulator. That’s a structural change worth understanding.

The duty is tiered — smaller qualifying premises need awareness and a documented response plan; larger venues need formal threat assessments, rehearsed drills, and documented mitigations. If your site sits in scope (retail with footfall, offices with public reception, events, transport hubs, hospitality), expect the inspection lens to widen significantly.

The honest version: this isn’t a parallel system. The same SIA that can suspend a licence will now be assessing whether your site’s CT planning, hostile reconnaissance reporting, search procedures, and control room escalation routes are up to standard. Drills will need to evidence themselves — not just exist on paper.

The Section 12 consultation is live and your chance to shape what “proportionate” looks like before it’s locked in. Most submissions will come from corporate stakeholders. Practitioner voices carry disproportionate weight when they show up.

Key takeaway: If you work a venue in scope, push your management team to respond to the Section 12 consultation. The standard you’ll be inspected against in 2027 is being written this month.

The SIA is on track to become a “prescribed person” under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) from 2 June 2026, subject to final parliamentary scrutiny. In plain terms: from that date, workers in the security industry will be able to report serious wrongdoing directly to the SIA and receive whistleblower legal protection in return.

This matters because most experienced supervisors have seen something at some point. A site running on half the contracted manpower. An officer working without a valid licence. A safeguarding concern that a manager closed down. Until now, the only route was internal — and internal hasn’t always worked.

PIDA-prescribed status changes that calculation. From 2 June, reports on licence misuse, unsafe staffing, ignored CT or H&S risks, and serious compliance breaches can go straight to the regulator, with the reporting individual shielded from retaliation.

Fix: Diary 2 June. Brief your team that month on the two whistleblowing routes — internal first, SIA direct under PIDA — and when each one applies.

Real incident this week. A tenant called the loading bay reporting a gas smell from their AC unit. They self-evacuated and called the fire brigade direct. SCR radioed the duty supervisor immediately — break or no break, the radio is the radio.

Fire brigade attended. After their initial sweep, they cleared the immediate area but flagged that a specialist gas safety engineer needed to do a deeper check before the unit could be released. That’s the moment most incidents collapse — the first uniformed “all clear” feels like the finish line.

It isn’t.

The supervisor stayed on it. Retrieved keys from the FCC, opened the neighbouring unit so fire brigade could rule out cross-contamination. Ventilated the space. Briefed the tenant not to re-energise the AC until their head office had identified the fault. When the gas safety engineer arrived, escorted them through a final sweep with their own detection equipment. Only then was the unit released back to trading.

The lesson sits in the gap most teams skip: an all-clear from one specialist isn’t an all-clear. Verify, ventilate, document, escort the next specialist, and sign it off when the last check confirms it — not the first.

Bottom line: The shift that handled an incident properly is the one that escorted the last responder out, not the first.

Martyn’s Law: Section 12 statutory guidance consultation — GOV.UK

The official SIA consultation page. Worth 30 minutes of your time this month if you work a venue likely to be in scope. Submissions from working practitioners carry weight that desk-bound responses don’t.

Thanks for reading. If you found this useful, forward it to one colleague who’d benefit — that’s how this grows.

Until next Tuesday.

Andras

Control Room Supervisor & Deputy Security Operations Manager

The Control Room