The four procedures, and what each one needs
Evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication. This is the whole of the standard-tier duty, and it is the only duty a school will have.
Section 5, and nothing else
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 asks standard duty premises for public protection procedures — four of them. It does not ask for equipment. The Home Office has said plainly that those in scope can comply without buying specialist services, and that it endorses no third-party products. We quote that even though we sell things, because a supplier who hides it is not worth listening to on anything else.
Education premises are standard duty premises regardless of how many people are on site — that is on the face of Schedule 1, not our reading of it. A three-form-entry primary and a 2,500-pupil secondary are in exactly the same tier, and neither has a duty to install anything.
So the honest position is this: you can satisfy section 5 with paper, training and practice. What you cannot do with paper is perform it at the speed the situation needs, on a site where the person who notices is four hundred metres from the person who decides. That gap is what the platform is for.
What the Act names, and what each one asks of you
Evacuation
Move staff and pupils away from the threat, with the instruction attached to the alarm rather than left to memory.
Invacuation
Bring people inside to pre-defined safe zones, named on the device so nobody has to remember which room.
Lockdown
Secure the site immediately, triggered from one app by whoever is nearest to knowing.
Communication
Updates to the right people while it is running, and a time-stamped record of every action and decision afterwards.
Communication
Of the four, communication is the procedure most schools genuinely cannot perform today. Evacuation is practised every term. Lockdown is at least written down. Invacuation is usually a paragraph. But telling everybody something specific, at once, including the sports hall, the mobile classrooms and a trip that has not come back — almost nobody can do that, and it is the one an inspector can test in a minute.
What good looks like
Every adult told inside a few seconds, with the action for their role attached, and a way to see who has acknowledged it.
What most sites have
A phone tree, a WhatsApp group that half the staff have muted, and an assumption that the office will cope.
Why WhatsApp is not it
It is not access-controlled, the record is not yours, leavers keep the history, and nobody can tell who has actually read anything. Cosafe makes this argument at length and it is a fair one.
What to do first
Run the drill before you buy anything. The gap will be obvious within ten minutes and you will know exactly what you are solving.
Where a platform earns its place
- The person who notices is rarely the person who decides — and on a large site they are nowhere near each other.
- The instruction has to travel with the alarm, or staff do the wrong thing confidently.
- Somebody has to be able to see the response, or leadership is managing an incident blind.
- The record has to write itself, because nobody takes minutes during a lockdown.
- It has to work when the office is the part of the site that is affected.
This is not legal advice
Martyn’s Law is not yet in force and no product makes an organisation compliant with it. The duty sits with the responsible person. We sell systems that make a written procedure something your staff can actually perform — that is a different claim, and a defensible one.
Sources
Everything on this page is taken from these. Checked 25 September 2026.
- Section 5 — public protection procedures
- Schedule 1 paragraph 13 — childcare and early years
- Schedule 1 paragraph 14 — primary and secondary education
- Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025: statutory guidance (Home Office)
- Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025: overarching factsheet (Home Office)
- ProtectUK — Martyn's Law
- Cosafe — UK
- Cosafe — why not Teams, Slack or WhatsApp
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