On Thursday 10 September, Audiebant’s Gary Dean joined the speaker line-up at the CPD-accredited Martyn’s Law Conference, held at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as part of DSSL Technology Day 2026.
The conference was hosted by DSSL Group in partnership with the Association of Security Consultants, the first time the two organisations have run the event together. It brought together perspectives from the Home Office, the Security Industry Authority, strategic planning, communications and physical security, with the aim of moving the conversation on Martyn’s Law from legislation towards practical implementation.
Communication as part of implementation, not an add-on
Gary’s session focused on the part of Martyn’s Law that is easy to underestimate: communication.
Preparing for the legislation is often framed as a documentation exercise. Assess the premises, write the procedures, record the decisions. That work matters, but a procedure only does its job at the moment it reaches the people who have to act on it. Gary’s argument was that organisations need to think as carefully about how a response is communicated as they do about what the response is.
That means asking some straightforward questions. When something happens, who needs to be told, where are they, and what exactly do you want them to do? Can a message reach one part of a site without triggering a response everywhere else? Do the instructions make sense to a member of the public who has never been in the building before, as well as to a trained member of staff? And can whoever is making the decision actually get the message out under pressure, quickly and clearly, without hunting for the right tool?
Martyn’s Law places the emphasis on procedures for evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication. Those four things are not separate workstreams. Moving people to safety, holding them in place or securing a site are all communication problems before they are anything else. If the message is late, unclear, or heard by the wrong group, the plan behind it is of limited use.
Gary also made the point that security measures have to work for the people expected to deliver and follow them. Plans are rarely executed by the person who wrote them. They are delivered by shift staff, stewards, receptionists, caretakers and volunteers, often on their first week, often on their own. Designing for that reality is what separates a compliant plan from a plan that works.
The wider programme
Gary’s session sat alongside a strong programme covering the legislation from several directions:
- A speaker from the UK Home Office set out the government’s position on Martyn’s Law and what it is intended to achieve.
- Ronnie Megaughin, Deputy Director of Inspections and Enforcement at the Security Industry Authority, spoke on the regulator’s role, covering compliance and enforcement as the SIA prepares to take on its new responsibilities.
- Chris Medhurst-Cocksworth addressed the strategic planning side, looking at how organisations think through their response and their responsibilities.
- Lee Doddridge, Vice Chair and Events Lead at the Association of Security Consultants, brought the consultant’s perspective on advising clients through the changes ahead.
The programme closed with a panel discussion on the practical implications of the legislation, followed by a stadium tour and time to connect with consultants, end users and manufacturers across the wider DSSL Technology Day exhibition.
Why the timing matters
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 received Royal Assent in April 2025. The Home Office published its statutory guidance in April 2026, and the Act is expected to come into force in spring 2027. There is no legal requirement to comply until then.
That gap is the useful part. It is the window in which organisations can work out what their response actually looks like, test whether their people can deliver it, and put the means of communicating it in place, without doing it against a deadline.
Thank you to DSSL Group and the Association of Security Consultants for putting the day together, and to everyone who came to talk to us afterwards.
If you would like to discuss how communication fits into your Martyn’s Law preparations, get in touch with the team.
