The Protect Duty - Respond to the Standard Tier Consultation

The Protect Duty is a new statutory responsibility which will impact Churches and Places of Worship. Responses to this consultation are needed.

The deadline for responses is 18 March 2024

What is all this about?

The consultations and parliamentary process for the Bill to implement a Protect Duty ("Martyn's Law") have made a difference. Changes have been introduced to mitigate the severe unintended consequences of the original proposals. As it was they would have given terrorism a win by making things very difficult for churches and places of worship. I set out why that was here.

It is now really important to respond to the consultation on the impact of the proposals as they now stand so that the changes for the better are not lost and so that the Bill can be improved further. Government needs to be clear about the impact of the Duty on Churches and other places of worship

The more individual responses there are the better. Please respond yourself, and ask others in your community to do so.

Leading the fifth anniversary vigil on Westminster Bridge 22 March 2022

What is the Duty?

The Protect Duty (“Martyn’s Law”) has the good aim “to make the public safer at publicly accessible locations”. It will impose a statutory duty to prepare for a terrorist attack on those who manage “Publicly Accessible Locations”, including places of worship.

There will be two tiers based on capacities of up to 799 (Standard Tier) and 800 and above (Enhanced Tier). Following the initial consultations and the impact assessment the decision has been made that "Places of Worship (PoW) will fall within the standard tier, except for some large premises which charge for entry. This is due to the unique nature of PoW as free and openly accessible sites, welcoming to all people, with no restrictions placed on entry, and usually with no commercial drivers to attract people compared to other premises in scope, and the significant mitigating work programmes already in place at PoW."

What will I have to do?

Those responsible for Standard Tier Premises must:

Notification
Notify the Regulator that they are responsible for standard tier premises. All Churches and Places of Worship will need to do this.

Procedural Measures
Have in place procedural measures that could be expected to reduce, so far as reasonably practicable, the risk of physical harm to individuals at the premises in the event of an attack.

This will include procedures for:

• Evacuation – how to get people out of the building,
• Invacuation - how to bring people into the premises to keep them safe, or move them to safe parts of the building
• Lockdown - how to secure the premises against attackers, e.g. locking doors, closing shutters and using barriers to prevent access
• Communication - how to alert staff and customers and move people away from danger.

Alterations to Buildings
It is not expected or required that physical alterations be undertaken or additional equipment purchased for Standard Tier premises.

Training
There was a proposal that a specified form would have to be completed, and specific training undertaken by those working at the premises. This will no longer be needed, but, as part of putting in place the procedural measures, workers and volunteers will need to be sufficiently instructed or trained to carry them out effectively.

Overall
This is designed to be roughly equivalent to the fire safety regimes we are used to, both for regular users and for those who may hire our halls and other buildings. This law will have teeth: ultimately the Regulator can fine an organisation for non compliance. But the emphasis will be on guidance and support, and fines will be proportionate to the scale and wealth of the organisation concerned.

Why Respond?

The changes to the draft legislation are broadly to be welcomed. There will still be more to do, but many of the concerns have been addressed. But there is still a need to respond to the consultation. 

• The consultation contains a welcome statement of recognition of "the unique nature of Places of Worship as free and openly accessible sites, welcoming to all people, with no restrictions placed on entry, and usually with no commercial drivers to attract people compared to other premises in scope." Responding can help to keep this view front and centre.
• There is still an impact and a lot of action required: the responsible person will have to register with the Regulator; the Procedural Measures will need to be planned, adopted and recorded, and volunteers and others must trained in them.
• Nothing has been said to address the concern that there be a pressure from the H&S providers to extend and enhance actions, and that without such actions insurance might rise, to the point that the Duty becomes more burdensome than it is now being designed to be. We see this tendency in the fitting of elaborate and expensive fire alarm systems ‘just in case’.
• The impact assessment for the legislation notes that Places of Worship represent 16% of the publicly accessible places in scope. The vast majority of these are churches. It is crucial that we are clear that the unintended consequences have all been identified and mitigated.
• The Responses to the earlier consultation Made a Difference. Thanks to all those who contributed ot the previous consultations. In addition to the changes noted above, the impact assessment notes

Within the research, it was found that Places of Worship differ significantly from other Publicly Accessible Places and thus they are considered separately from other PALs within this Impact Assessment. This affects all the costings as, due to larger numbers of volunteers within PoW, the average wages are estimated to be lower as well as having a different profile of interventions for Martyn’s Law. There may be more PALs premises that are like PoW and have large amounts of volunteers, and which hold similar reservations over large-scale interventions. This may include premises that are run by charitable organisations or run by small and micro-businesses. However, due to a lack of evidence on the prevalence of these types of premises by capacity, it is not possible to estimate the specific way these premises will respond to Martyn’s Law, and they are assumed to be most similar to the average publicly accessible location.

The benefits to cathedrals and larger churches has also been significant:

In an effort to reduce the burden on high-capacity sites which may have low levels of attendance, such as Cathedrals and other PoW, these sites have been excluded from the enhanced tier unless they require payment to enter. This means that these sites have a greatly reduced burden, having only to do CT planning and training, rather than put into place Counter Terrorism interventions and face the associated financial costs. This reduces the burden on these sites, and paying sites may be able to cover the increased cost through passing some of the burden on.

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Protecting us well

Martyn’s Law came out of a terrible tragedy. It is an attempt to close loopholes and deny terrorists the ability to perpetrate violence and evil. The process of framing law requires consultation to help it to do what it sets out to do. As originally drafted the legislation might have given the terrorists a win by forcing small churches and places of worship to close their doors or to be less open than they would have been. The legislators have listened, and the proposals are now much better. This is cause for thanks and appreciation.

Please respond to the consultation to help make sure that what has been done is embedded in the final drafts and that the impact of the law is properly understood.