Live status

What parts of Martyn’s Law are in force today?

The Act is being switched on in stages, and knowing which stage you are in matters: it is the difference between duties that exist now and duties that are coming. This page tracks the live position and is updated whenever the law moves.

Position as of 2 September 2026 · Reviewed fortnightly against legislation.gov.uk and gov.uk

In force now

Made, but waiting for commencement

The Notification Requirements Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/793), made on 9 July 2026, are the first substantive regulations under the Act. They fix the notification deadlines, information and authorised submitter rules, and they come into force on the day the notification duty itself does. Our notification guide covers them in detail.

Not yet in force

Every duty on venues. Sections 2 to 10, the tiers, the procedures and measures duties, the compliance document, the senior individual requirement and the notification duty all await commencement regulations that have not been made. No venue is currently required to notify anyone or to hold any document, and nothing can be submitted to the SIA yet.

Beware precise-sounding countdowns. No commencement date exists in law. The Home Office has confirmed the Act will not come into force before April 2027 and the SIA expects commencement in spring 2027; anything more precise than that is a guess dressed as a deadline. When a date is fixed, it will arrive as a commencement SI on legislation.gov.uk, and this page will say so.

Guidance updates in August

The law did not move in August 2026, but the paperwork around it did. A correction slip was added to the Home Office statutory guidance on 6 August: it reverses the guidance’s tenanted pub example, so the tenant in control of the premises, not the brewery or pub company holding the licence, is the responsible person, and it corrects the name of the Recognise, Assess, React (RAR) campaign. The slip sits at the front of the guidance and takes precedence over the uncorrected example still printed in the body. Welsh translations of the guidance and its supplementary documents followed on 25 August.

The SIA also gave a progress update on 5 August: it is building the notification portal, with further information promised nearer the time, and it will invite people to test and give feedback on draft regulatory guidance materials before they are published.

The road ahead

• Autumn 2026. The SIA’s final regulatory guidance and consultation report, following its spring consultation. This is expected to settle inspection posture, formats and templates. The SIA has said it will invite feedback on draft materials first (5 August 2026).
• Early 2027. The SIA invites volunteers to test its notification portal.
• Spring 2027 (expected). Commencement, the portal opens, and the three-month notification window for existing premises begins.

What the staging means in practice

The absence of live duties is preparation time, not a reason to wait. The tier you will notify, the attendance evidence behind it, and the procedures you will need to evidence all take longer to assemble than a notification takes to file. The scope checker gives you a starting position, the tier guide explains what your tier will require, and the documents checklist is the full preparation list.