Martyn's Law, standard tier. Updated August 2026

Are you in scope?

Three questions decide it, and the third one catches people out. Most estates have fewer premises in scope than they fear, and almost all of them have at least one they had not counted.

Question one: is it a qualifying use?

The Act lists the kinds of use that bring premises into scope. Broadly it covers places the public can get into: shops, food and drink venues, entertainment and leisure, hotels and other visitor accommodation, sports grounds, libraries, museums and galleries, visitor attractions, places of worship, healthcare, childcare and education, and public authority buildings.

Offices that the public do not visit are generally outside it. So is private residential accommodation. If members of the public can walk in without an appointment, assume you are looking at a qualifying use and move to the next question.

Question two: 200, or 800?

Standard tier runs from 200 to 799. Enhanced tier starts at 800. Places of worship are the exception and sit in standard tier whatever their capacity, which matters a great deal to cathedrals and large mosques. There is a page on that.

The number counts everyone who may be present, which includes your staff, not only customers.

Question three: how often is "from time to time"?

This is the one that catches people. The test is not what happens on a normal Tuesday. It is whether it is reasonable to expect 200 or more people at the same time, from time to time.

So a pub whose ordinary evening is sixty people may still be in scope if it fills for a cup final, a wedding reception, a beer festival or New Year's Eve. A village hall that is empty most of the week is in scope if it takes 250 for a Christmas fair. The question to ask about each site is not what it usually holds, but what it held on its busiest night last year, and whether that is likely to happen again.

Per site, not per estate

The threshold applies to each premises separately. It is not aggregated across an estate, a brand or a company. A group of forty pubs where only nine cross 200 has nine premises in scope, not forty, and no obligation at all on the other thirty-one.

This cuts both ways for a large operator. It reduces the work considerably, and it means somebody has to go site by site and make a judgement about each one, which is not a job that can be done from head office on a spreadsheet of floor areas.

Where the boundaries get awkward

Situation	How to think about it
A concession inside a larger venue	The host venue usually controls the wider premises, and the wider premises are what carries the capacity.
A hotel with function rooms	Count the whole premises on an occasion when the function room is full, not the function room alone.
An outdoor area or garden	If it is part of the premises you control and people are on it, they count.
A site that only crosses 200 once a year	Once a year is still "from time to time". It is in scope.
A site right on 200	Treat it as in scope. The cost of standard tier compliance is far below the cost of being wrong.

Then work out whether it is even yours

Being in scope and holding the duty are two different things. A premises can be firmly in scope while the responsible person is somebody else entirely, which is the normal position for a pub company's tenanted estate. Settle that before you start writing procedures. Who holds the duty.