On Thursday, 3 April 2025, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, also known as Martyn’s Law, received Royal Assent. This marks a landmark effort to improve how businesses prepare for and respond to terrorist threats in all public settings.
Named in memory of Martyn Hett, who was one of the 22 victims of the 2017 Manchester Arena Attack. The act was put in place to ensure all public spaces and venues implement more stringent public safety measures.
Key components of Martyn’s Law
- Risk Assessments
- Security Measures
- Emergency Plans
- Staff Training
- Public Awareness
How can digital signage support some of the key elements of the new legislation?
Emergency Plans – Real-Time Emergency Alerts
Speed has been proven essential in crisis communication, an instant change in messaging shown to offer direction and instruction can save lives. Digital signage has the capability to instantly display safety messages and emergency instructions. These can include shelter in place, lockdown alerts, silent alerts and emergency wayfinding. This can all be operated from a central point and can be implemented on multiple or individual screens at any time.
Staff training
Preparation is crucial in any emergency and is a key element in the new legislation. Digital signage can display training content across as little or as many locations as required, all while ensuring content stays consistent. Visual learning has been proven to stimulate staff engagement and can be key to better knowledge retention; digital displays can offer intuitive and new ways to deliver training material.
Public Awareness
Digital signage is used in many forms for day-to-day public awareness, it can display special offers, building maps along with a whole host of useful information. Adding content which displays information on reporting suspicious activity or detailing emergency procedures and escape routes would ensure public awareness even when not in an active emergency.
Inclusivity & Accessibility
Although not specifically detailed in the legislation, inclusivity and accessibility is imperative in all public settings. This ensures that in an emergency every person is well informed regardless of their abilities. Digital signage can display emergency messages & instructions in multiple languages as well as high visibility visual aids.
All businesses and venues have 24 months to implement improvements and ensure they are compliant with the new legislation. Digital signage could be the tool to support you making the transition as easy and effective as possible.
We at Digital Sign Solutions have already implemented digital screens across multiple organisations, in particular within the education sector, these screens allow instant emergency alerts that override the current playlists provided by our CMS system.