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Most schools do. The Act applies to any premises or event with a capacity of 100 or more persons. Capacity is not just your roll — it is the number of people who could reasonably be present at any one time, including staff, visitors and parents at events.
Most secondary schools, larger primaries, and any school that hosts lettings, public events or community use will be in scope. Enforcement begins 1 April 2027. If you are not sure, our free Martyn's Law assessment tool will tell you within five minutes.
Standard Tier (100 to 799 persons) requires a named Responsible Person, written protective procedures and trained staff. The procedures must reflect the actual technical capability of your installed systems.
Enhanced Tier (800 or more persons) requires all Standard Tier obligations plus proportionate physical security measures, a suitably qualified security professional involved in planning, and detailed plans submitted to the Security Industry Authority.
The boundary is not always clear-cut. A school with a capacity near 800 needs to think carefully about how capacity is measured, particularly if it hosts large public events.
For Standard Tier, the law requires documented procedures and trained staff rather than a specific list of physical systems. However, your procedures must reflect genuine capability — you cannot document a lockdown process that your building cannot actually execute.
In practice, most schools need: a controlled main entrance, CCTV covering all public-facing entry and exit points, a tested lockdown capability, and a visitor identity and logging process. Our article Martyn's Law Physical Security: 12 Things You Need in Place covers this in full.
For Enhanced Tier, proportionate physical security measures are required, which typically means a more comprehensive system including access control, monitored CCTV and a documented security plan.
The Security Industry Authority will have powers to issue compliance notices and financial penalties. More importantly, in the event of a serious incident, the Responsible Person's position will be significantly more exposed if compliance obligations were known and ignored.
Organisations that can demonstrate a documented good-faith compliance effort — threat assessment, trained staff, tested procedures, governor oversight — are in a substantially different position to those who have done nothing, even if full compliance was not yet complete by the deadline.
Yes. The Act applies whenever members of the public are admitted to your premises, not just during the school day. Parents' evenings, productions, sports fixtures, community lettings and open days are all in scope if they meet the capacity threshold.
Your protective procedures must explicitly cover these events — including how access is controlled with large numbers of unfamiliar people on site and how obligations are met when the headteacher is not present.
Yes. CCTV that captures images of identifiable individuals is personal data under UK GDPR. Schools and public bodies operating CCTV are data controllers and must comply with all relevant obligations.
This means having a documented lawful basis, a Data Protection Impact Assessment, a retention policy, role-based access controls, appropriate signage and a Subject Access Request process. We provide all of this as part of every installation.
There is no fixed legal limit, but ICO guidance is that footage should be retained only as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. For most schools, 31 days is the standard retention period, after which footage should be automatically deleted.
Footage relating to a specific incident or investigation should be flagged and retained for as long as needed, then deleted. Your CCTV policy documents your retention schedule and the process for flagging evidential footage.
You must respond within one calendar month. The requestor is entitled to footage in which they appear, but you must redact the images of any third parties who appear in the same footage before providing it.
Our systems include a Subject Access Request workflow: search by date, camera and location; clip and export the relevant footage; apply face-blurring for third parties; and deliver via an encrypted download link. Every step is logged for audit purposes.
Yes to both. The ICO requires that CCTV use is clearly communicated to those being recorded. Signage should identify that CCTV is in operation, who operates it, and where to find more information.
A written CCTV policy should document your lawful basis, purposes, retention schedule, access controls and SAR process. We produce a policy template as part of every school installation, and our CCTV Policy Generator produces an Acceptable Use Policy, Privacy Notice and DPIA template for free.
Yes. We offer a free, no-obligation site survey for schools and public sector organisations. The survey covers your current provision, identifies gaps against DfE guidance, KCSiE and Martyn's Law, and produces a written assessment you can take away regardless of whether you proceed with us.
There is no pressure to receive a quote at the end. We would rather you have a useful assessment of your current position than feel obligated to act on it immediately.
Yes. All engineers working on school and educational premises hold current DBS Enhanced Disclosure certificates. We provide copies to the lead contact before any engineer attends site. You do not need to ask.
We price on a fixed-cost basis wherever the scope allows. The price you are quoted is the price you pay, unless the scope changes. If a variation is needed, we notify you immediately, agree the change in writing, and do not proceed until it is approved.
We do not win work by underquoting and recovering costs through variations.
Every installation includes a complete handover pack:
This is standard, not an add-on.
In most cases, yes. We can integrate ONVIF-compliant cameras into a new Video Management System, connect legacy analogue cameras via IP encoders, and add to existing access control or alarm infrastructure where the panels support it.
We will tell you honestly if your existing equipment is not worth integrating — either because it is incompatible or because the cost of adaptation exceeds the benefit.
Yes. We are based in Faversham, Kent and serve schools and public sector organisations nationally across England. We are particularly active across the South East — Kent, London, Surrey, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and East Anglia — but take on projects nationally for the right scope.
We support all standard public sector procurement routes:
Yes, and we actively support this. A MAT-wide procurement allows you to standardise systems across your estate, negotiate better pricing, maintain consistent documentation and compliance standards, and benefit from a single maintenance relationship.
We have experience designing phased rollout programmes for MATs — starting with the highest-risk sites and working systematically across the estate within budget constraints.
Most schools use a combination of devolved capital budget, school condition funding, and in some cases specific DfE or local authority grants. Martyn's Law compliance work is increasingly recognised as legitimate capital expenditure.
We can help you build the financial case for governors or the MAT board, including a five-year total cost of ownership analysis. Our free cost estimator gives you an indicative budget figure to start that conversation.
All installations are designed and commissioned to the relevant British and European Standards:
Standards are the floor, not the ceiling. DfE guidance and KCSiE requirements often go further.
AI analytics means the camera or a local processor analyses the video feed in real time and generates an alert based on what it detects — a person loitering beyond a set time, a vehicle in a restricted zone, someone crossing a perimeter line at night. Rather than someone watching a screen, the system watches for you.
Whether you need it depends on your site. For a small primary, basic CCTV with recording may be sufficient. For a large secondary with extensive external areas, or a site that has experienced incidents, AI analytics shifts your security posture from reactive to proactive. We will tell you honestly whether it is warranted. See our AI analytics service page for more.
Monitoring connects your alarm and CCTV systems to an independently approved Alarm Receiving Centre, staffed round the clock. When an alarm signal is received, trained operators verify the activation, contact keyholders in sequence, and notify police where a confirmed event is suspected.
Schools are unoccupied for over 70% of the year. Without monitoring, an alarm in an empty building is just noise. Many school insurers require monitored systems as a condition of cover. See our monitoring service page for full detail.
Yes. Listed buildings require careful consideration of cable routing and fixings, but they do not prevent a comprehensive installation. In many cases, wireless technology eliminates the need for cable routes entirely — we can deliver CCTV, access control and alarm coverage without any structural intervention requiring listed building consent.
We have experience in Victorian school buildings, heritage sites and grade-listed public buildings. The survey stage is more involved in these environments, and we allocate more time to it accordingly.
Eight free tools, none requiring registration:
No. All tools process data in your browser only. Nothing you enter is sent to our servers, stored, or shared. When you close the browser tab, the data is gone. This is by design — we do not want your compliance information, incident logs or policy documents any more than you want to share them.
The AI tools use the Anthropic API to process your inputs, but the data is not retained beyond the immediate processing session.
Whether you are starting from scratch, replacing an ageing system, or working out what Martyn's Law means for your building, we are happy to start with a conversation.