Don’t Let the Security Industry Sell You Martyn’s Law

Some time in the next year, the phone will ring in your school office. The caller will mention Martyn’s Law, a looming deadline and the awful risk of non-compliance, and by the end of the conversation you will be holding a quote for cameras, gates or an entry system you did not know you needed when you woke up. I work in the security industry. I am writing to tell you that you can almost certainly put the phone down.

Let me take the three claims you are most likely to hear, because all three are shaky.

First: The Deadline That Does Not Exist

You will be told you must be ready by April 2027. There is no such deadline. Martyn’s Law received royal assent in April 2025, and the government promised at least 24 months before its duties take effect. April 2027 is the earliest that window can open, not a date anyone must hit. No commencement date has been set, and the statutory guidance from the Home Office, the Security Industry Authority and the Department for Education has not even been published yet. Anyone selling you urgency is selling you a date that does not exist.

Second: The Tier You Are Not In

The Act sorts premises into a standard tier and an enhanced tier, and you may be told your school falls into the more demanding enhanced category because of your numbers. It almost certainly does not. The Department for Education has confirmed that education settings sit in the standard tier regardless of size. A secondary school of 1,500 is treated the same as a village primary. Whatever you are being quoted for on the strength of your headcount, the premise is wrong.

Third: The Standard Tier Requires No Kit

And this is the one that should save you the most money. The standard tier does not require you to install anything. Not a camera, not a gate, not a single new lock. What it requires is that a named responsible person puts sensible procedures in place for the moment an attack happens: getting people out, moving them to a safe part of the building, locking down and communicating quickly. Documented plans and trained staff, in other words. If your school already has a lockdown routine and a strong safeguarding culture, and almost all do, you are far closer to meeting the duty than any salesperson will admit.

There Is No Such Thing as a Compliant System

So when someone offers you a “Martyn’s Law compliant” system or a “certification package”, be sceptical. There is no such certificate. The Security Industry Authority will regulate the regime, and no installer can declare you compliant, however glossy the brochure. The phrase is marketing, not law.

The Work Is Mostly Yours, and Mostly Free

None of this means the risk is imaginary or that you should do nothing. It means the work is mostly yours to do, and mostly free. Read the Department for Education’s guidance for education settings. Walk your site and ask the honest questions: where would people go, how would we tell everyone at once, who takes charge. Revisit your lockdown and evacuation plans and check they genuinely work rather than merely existing in a folder. Train your staff, and point them at the free Action Counters Terrorism e-learning from Counter Terrorism Policing, which costs nothing and takes under an hour. Schools Week has already run a useful legal roadmap through the compliance steps, and it is a better starting point than any sales call.

Buy Because You Chose To, Not Because You Were Sold To

If, having done all that, you find a real gap that a piece of equipment would close, then by all means buy it. Buy it because you identified the problem, specified the fix and chose the supplier, not because a stranger on the phone attached a law to a quote. That is the whole difference between spending and being sold to.

I know it is odd for someone in my trade to tell you to keep your chequebook shut. But school budgets are stretched to the point of pain, and every pound spent calming a manufactured fear is a pound not spent on a teaching assistant or a set of reading books. The test of good security advice has always been whether it leaves you with what you need, not with what the adviser happened to be selling.

Martyn’s Law is a serious piece of legislation and a genuine determination to keep people safe. It deserves better than to be turned into a sales script. When the call comes, you will know enough to ask the awkward questions. Most of the time, the honest answer is that you already have what you need.

Simon Legrand is a physical security specialist who works with schools and the public sector.