Event Safety Management

• Organisers whose event is going to a Safety Advisory Group, which covers most events on public land and most events above a few hundred people.
• Applicants for a premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003, where the licensing authority and the responsible authorities will expect an event safety plan behind the operating schedule.
• Anyone using temporary demountable structures, including stages, grandstands, marquees, big screens and delay towers.
• Local authorities, universities, charities and businesses running their own events, where the same organisation is both the client and the operator.
• Venue operators hosting third party promoters, who keep duties under section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 whatever the hire contract says.
• Anyone expecting 800 or more people at a ticketed or invitation-only event, who should already be planning for Martyn's Law.

• The event safety management plan itself, structured so a SAG member can find what they are looking for in under a minute.
• Site design review, covering ingress and egress routes, emergency vehicle access, pinch points, cross flows, barrier lines, viewing areas and the interface with the public highway.
• Capacity and crowd management planning, derived from site area, exit capacity, entry rate and the quality of the management in place rather than from what the ticketing platform is willing to sell.
• The arrival zone and the last mile outside the site line, which is where recent major incident learning has concentrated, including ticketless entry pressure and queue management before the gates.
• Temporary demountable structures, covering design responsibility, supplier competence, structural calculations, ground conditions, ballast and anchorage, a wind management plan with defined trigger wind speeds and a handover certificate before anything is loaded.
• Temporary electrical distribution and generators, covering distribution design, earthing arrangements, residual current protection, cable routing and protection, generator siting, fuel storage and bunding, refuelling controls and exhaust position.
• Fire safety across the site, covering the fire risk assessment for structures and enclosures, escape widths and travel distances, LPG and catering concessions, pyrotechnics and special effects, hot work permits during build and firefighting media.
• Contractor and supplier control, covering competence checks before appointment, review of method statements rather than mere collection of them, a build and break programme under a single site controller and permits for lifting, work at height and hot work.
• Medical and welfare provision scaled to the event profile and agreed with the ambulance service and the SAG, covering treatment points, ambulance access and egress, casualty tracking, hospital impact, toilets, free drinking water, lost child procedures and staff shift lengths.
• Adverse weather planning with named decision makers, monitored forecast sources, defined trigger points for wind, lightning, heat and ground conditions and the agreed action at each trigger.
• Show stop procedure, covering who holds the authority, how a stop is called, what is announced and over which system and how the event is restarted or abandoned.
• Emergency and major incident planning, integrated with your wider emergency planning and business continuity arrangements rather than written as a standalone document nobody has read.
• On site support through build, show and break, including pre-opening checks and a documented handover from the build phase to the show phase.

Martyn's Law is a layer on top, not a replacement

The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025. The substantive duties are not yet in force. Home Office statutory guidance was published on 15 April 2026. Go live is expected in spring 2027, which is an expectation rather than a statutory date.

A qualifying event at which 800 or more individuals are reasonably expected to be present at the same time is treated as enhanced tier. That means public protection procedures covering evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication, plus public protection measures covering monitoring, movement of people, physical safety and security and the security of information. Enhanced tier also carries a documented assessment provided to the Security Industry Authority and, where the responsible person is a body, a designated senior individual.

The practical point for events is that all four of those procedures already exist in a competent event plan under different names. Integrate them. Running a separate counter terrorism document alongside the event safety plan produces two plans that contradict each other at three in the morning. Our Martyn's Law compliance page sets out the duty in full.

• An event safety management plan with a version control page and a controlled distribution list.
• A site plan set showing emergency access, escape routes, barrier lines, structures, welfare and medical points.
• Event specific risk assessments covering crowd, structures, electrical, fire, weather and the build and break phases.
• A show stop and emergency procedure with named roles, trigger criteria and agreed announcement wording.
• A contractor and supplier assurance pack listing what must be received before anyone is allowed on site.
• A post event review report with actions carried forward into the next edition of the event.