Drawing your response on the floor plan

The single most useful thing you can make for Martyn's Law is a plan of your building with your response drawn on it. It turns the four procedures from words into something a stranger could act on - and it is where the gaps show up. Here is what to draw, and why a plan beats a page of prose.

By Andrew Wood · arx Partners · 6 min read · Last reviewed October 2026

The single most useful thing you can make for Martyn’s Law is a plan of your building with your response drawn on it. Not a page of prose — a plan. Exits, routes, the safer room, the doors you would secure and the spot people gather all live somewhere real, and a plan is the one place they can be seen together. Almost nobody tells you to do this, and it is the thing that turns four procedures from words into something a stranger could pick up and act on.

Do you have to draw a floor plan?

No. At the Standard Tier there is no legal requirement to write anything down, let alone draw it. The duty is to have appropriate public protection procedures in place and working, so far as is reasonably practicable — it is about what you can actually do on the day, not about paperwork.

So treat the plan as a tool, not a form. You are not drawing it to satisfy the regulator. You are drawing it because it is the fastest way to see whether your four procedures actually hang together in the building you have — and to brief the people who would have to carry them out.

Why does a plan beat a written procedure?

Because a response is made of places, and places belong on a map, not in a paragraph. “Evacuate to the assembly point” is a sentence anyone can write. A plan makes you point at which assembly point, reached by which route, from which exit — and that is where the gaps show up.

It is also what makes the procedure repeatable. A new duty manager, a weekend volunteer or a steward on their first shift can look at one marked-up sheet and understand the response, without the one person who wrote it standing next to them. If the plan only makes sense with that person in the room, it is not finished.

What do you actually draw on it?

Start with a simple plan of the premises — a fire-evacuation drawing, a letting plan, even a tidy hand sketch will do. Then mark the four procedures on it, one at a time.

  • Evacuation — mark every exit, the route to each one, and the assembly point or points. Getting people out is the guidance’s own wording for this: moving them safely out of the premises. Draw the routes people would actually take, not the ones you wish they would.
  • Invacuation — mark the safer place inside, away from glass and the frontage, where you would move people to, or bring them into, if the danger is outside. This is the one most plans miss, because it is the opposite instinct to a fire drill.
  • Lockdown — mark the doors, shutters and barriers you would use to secure the building, and the line you would hold to keep someone out. Lockdown is securing the premises to stop people entering or leaving — so the plan has to show what actually locks, and from which side.
  • Communication — mark how an alert reaches people, and, just as important, where it does not. Shade the rooms the PA cannot reach, or the far hall where a shout is lost. Those shaded patches are where you need a person to pass the word by hand.
An example marked-up floor plan A simple hall plan with the four Martyn’s Law procedures drawn on it: evacuation routes to an assembly point, a safer room for invacuation, the doors to secure in lockdown, and the corner the public-address system does not reach. A Assembly point (away from the front) Safer room invacuation Main hall Lobby PA PA doesn’t reach here pass word by hand fire exit entrance (glass front) — lock Evacuation — exits, routes, assembly point Invacuation — safer room Lockdown — doors you secure Communication — PA dead zone
An example, not a template. The four procedures drawn on one simple hall plan: routes to a side assembly point (evacuation), a safer room away from the glass (invacuation), the doors you’d secure (lockdown), and the corner the PA can’t reach (communication). A real one would be your building, in your hand.

The workbook has this built in. Rather than start from scratch, you can upload a plan of your premises — or reuse one already in your document library — and mark it up on screen: drop your exits, trace the evacuation routes, place the assembly point, shade the safer room and flag the doors you would secure. It saves as a plan you can edit again later, and the marked-up version flows straight onto your Evacuation, Invacuation and Lockdown plan documents, so the drawing and the record are the same thing. Pen and paper is still perfectly fine — this just makes it quicker to make, share and keep current.

What does the plan show you that words hide?

The dead zones. Drawing it is how you catch the things a written procedure quietly skips: the assembly point that sits right in front of the main doors, the fire exit that is chained shut on a busy Saturday, the “safer room” that is all glass, the far room the tannoy never reaches. In prose these read fine. On a plan they are obvious — and obvious is what you want, because the alternative is finding out on the day.

This is the honest version of the question everyone is really asking: have I done enough? A marked-up plan does not answer it for you, but it lets you see the gaps instead of guessing at them. You can look at the sheet and point to the parts that work and the parts that do not, which is a far better position than a tidy paragraph that has never been tested against the actual walls.

Who can call it, and where does the plan live?

Mark two more things and the plan stops being a drawing and starts being a response. First, write on it who can call each procedure — who says “get out”, who says “lock down” — because a response nobody is allowed to start is not a response. The responsible person is whoever controls the premises, but the person who calls it on the day is often the duty manager or the senior person on shift, and the plan should say so by role.

Second, it has to be somewhere people can find it — by the till, in the duty folder, inside the office door — not lost on one laptop. A plan that is real but unreachable fails the first test: could the next person pick this up and act on it? And brief the people who would use it, so it is not the first time they have seen it when it matters.

Do you need equipment or a consultant to do this?

No. This is a pen-and-paper job, and that is the point. The Standard Tier duties are deliberately low-cost — simple activities whose main cost is the time you spend thinking them through. There is no requirement to install anything, buy kit, or pay a consultant to produce a glossy document. A clear sketch that your own team understands beats an expensive plan that sits in a drawer. If you want the full picture of what you are and are not on the hook for, see what you do not have to buy.

What changes at the Enhanced Tier?

At the Enhanced Tier the plan stops being optional and becomes part of a document you have to keep and hand over. There you must write down not just the procedures but the measures you have in place or plan to put in place, include an assessment of how they reduce the premises’ vulnerability to an attack and the harm one could cause, and provide that document to the regulator. The marked-up plan is a natural backbone for it — the same four procedures, drawn, with the measures marked on too.

The tier turns on headcount: 200 to 799 people at the same time is the Standard Tier, 800 or more is the Enhanced Tier. If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, start with how to work out if you reach 200.

You have time to get this right

Martyn’s Law is not in force yet. The statutory guidance was published on 15 April 2026, and commencement is expected in April 2027 at the earliest, after a minimum 24-month implementation period. The regulator’s notification system is not open yet either, so there is nothing to file today. That is time to sit down with a plan of your building, mark the four procedures on it, walk it through once with your team, and set a date to look at it again — long before anyone asks.

Where the definitive answer is

For definitive information about whether your premises or event is within scope and what is required, refer to the current statutory guidance issued under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for the statutory guidance. For definitive information about whether your premises or event is within scope and what is required, refer to the current statutory guidance issued under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025.