Guide

Standard tier vs enhanced tier: what actually changes

The two tiers of Martyn’s Law share a purpose but ask for very different things. This guide sets out the thresholds, the duties each tier carries, the documents behind them, and the fixed-tier rules that put some large premises in the standard tier forever.

Last verified against the Act and official guidance on 2 September 2026 · Reviewed fortnightly

The thresholds

Qualifying premises are standard duty premises where it is reasonable to expect that from time to time 200 to 799 individuals may be present at the same time in connection with a Schedule 1 use, and enhanced duty premises from 800, under section 2 of the Act. The count is of expected actual attendance at your busiest realistic times, staff included, not the building’s theoretical or fire-safety capacity; the Home Office’s supplementary guidance sets out example assessment methods, and evidenced attendance data can justify a lower figure than your fire capacity. If you are unsure where you land, the scope checker applies the test in a minute.

Side by side

What standard tier really means

The standard tier is deliberately light on paperwork and heavy on reality. The legal duty is to have appropriate procedures in place, so far as reasonably practicable: there is no statutory requirement to write a compliance document or submit anything describing your procedures to the regulator. The Home Office guidance frames standard-tier compliance around low-cost, largely administrative preparation, and the SIA’s draft regulatory approach treats minor standard-tier non-compliance with signposting to guidance rather than enforcement.

Light is not optional, though. The SIA can inspect standard-tier premises, its inspectors can question your staff about the procedures directly, and undocumented procedures are hard to demonstrate. That is why the guidance calls documenting even simple procedures good practice, and why 19 of the 26 records in our documents checklist still apply at standard tier, almost all of them as evidence you hold rather than anything you send.

What enhanced tier adds

Enhanced duty premises take on three genuinely new obligations. Measures: alongside procedures for when an attack is suspected, section 6 requires public protection measures to reduce vulnerability day to day, across monitoring, movement of people, physical safety and security, and security of information. The compliance document: section 7’s central statutory document, containing statements of your procedures and measures and assessments of how each reduces risk, submitted to the SIA and kept current, with revised versions supplied within 30 days. One drafting rule matters: procedures must be stated as in place, while only measures may be described as proposed. The senior individual: where the responsible person is a company or other organisation, section 10 requires a designated individual concerned in its management or control to own compliance.

The fixed-tier rules almost everyone misses

Places of worship, childcare, and primary, secondary and further education premises are always standard tier, whatever their capacity, where that is the principal use. A cathedral or an 800-pupil school does not become enhanced duty premises. Higher education premises get no such protection and follow the normal thresholds. Events at worship and most education premises are also excluded from the qualifying events regime entirely.

The practical consequence: some of the largest and most complex premises in the country carry standard-tier duties only, and some operators who assume they are enhanced are not. Getting this wrong in either direction is expensive: over-classifying buys obligations the law never imposed, and under-classifying leaves the compliance document unwritten. The reasoning belongs in a written Scope and Tier Assessment, held as proof.

Moving between tiers

Tier follows expectation, so tier can change: a refurbishment, a new events programme or a change of use can move a venue across the 800 line in either direction, and notified information must be kept accurate with the SIA within 28 days of change. A one-off unexpected surge does not by itself re-tier the premises; the test remains what it is reasonable to expect from time to time. Reviews after material changes are what keep the assessment defensible.