Martyn’s Law for Pubs & bars

The instinct most licensees have is that Martyn's Law is for arenas and stadiums, not the local. On an ordinary Tuesday that instinct is right — a pub with thirty people in is nowhere near the threshold. But the Act does not ask how many people are usually in. It asks how many you can reasonably expect to be present at the same time, from time to time. That phrase is doing a lot of work, and it is where a surprising number of pubs cross the line.

“From time to time” means your predictable peaks: the cup final on the big screen, the Friday before Christmas, a popular quiz night, a wake, a stag party that books the back room. If you can reasonably foresee 200 or more people in the building on nights like those, the standard tier applies — even if those nights are a handful of times a year. The test is foreseeability, not frequency.

Crucially, the 200 includes everyone working: bar staff, kitchen, glass collectors, the door team, the DJ. A room that holds 180 customers comfortably can tip over 200 once you add a full rota on your busiest night. This is the single most common reason a pub that feels small turns out to be in scope.

You do not need a turnstile to work out your number. Most pubs already hold the evidence: the accommodation limit on your premises licence, the occupancy figure in your fire risk assessment, door clicker counts from a recent big night, and the staff rota for that same night. Take the busiest predictable evening, add the people working, and you have a defensible figure.

What matters as much as the number is the reasoning behind it. If you land just under 200, record why — and what would change it, such as taking a large private booking. If you land over, record the peak you based it on. A dated note that says “on cup-final nights we reasonably expect around 240 including eight staff, based on the 2026 fixtures and our door counts” is worth far more than a number with no story, because it shows your working if anyone ever asks.

Do not forget the parts of the pub that are not the main bar. Beer gardens, smoking areas, pavement seating and function rooms all hold people who count toward your figure and who your procedures have to reach. A capacity worked out from the bar alone, ignoring a beer garden that holds another sixty on a sunny match day, is the gap inspectors and incidents both find first.

At the standard tier the Act asks for four simple public protection procedures — evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication — that your staff can actually carry out. None of them needs to cost money. What they need is to fit your real layout and your real staffing on a busy night.

Evacuation has to account for routes from the garden, the function room and the toilets, not just the front door. Invacuation — bringing people inside and away from a threat outside — means having thought about how you move garden, smoking-area and pavement customers in quickly. Lockdown means being able to secure entrances without ever blocking a fire exit. And communication is the one pubs most often underestimate: over a roaring sports crowd, someone has to own killing the music and the screens so an instruction can be heard, with a loud-voice fallback and a bar-to-kitchen-to-garden-to-door relay for when there is no working PA.

The honest test is whether the eighteen-year-old who started last week would know what to do. If your procedures only work when the manager happens to be standing in the right place, they are not ready yet — and that is exactly the kind of thing a short written note and a five-minute briefing fixes.

Two things change the picture on specific nights. The first is a ticketed event. If you put on a night that is open to the public, controlled by tickets or wristbands, and you can reasonably expect 800 or more people including staff at some point, that can be a qualifying event in its own right — which sits in the enhanced tier with extra duties. Most pubs never reach that, but the moment to check is before the event goes on sale, not after.

The second is your door team. Plenty of pub procedures quietly assume security that only works Friday and Saturday. If your busy nights and your staffed nights are not the same nights, the plan has a hole in it. Either align them, or write procedures that work on the nights you do not have a door team.

The standard tier was deliberately designed to be achievable without buying anything. There is no requirement to install equipment, hire a consultant or put staff through a paid course. The Government's own estimate puts the typical standard-tier cost at a few hundred pounds a year, almost all of it management and staff time rather than cash.

In practice, readiness for a pub is a short written record of your capacity basis and your four procedures, a quick briefing so the team knows them, and a date in the diary to look at it again. Free awareness materials from ProtectUK help with the training side. The duties are not expected to be in force until spring 2027, which means there is time to do this calmly now rather than in a scramble later — and a dated record is what shows you were prepared.