With new lockdown expectations soon to be introduced under Martyn’s Law, Alex Jay, CEO of Little Green Button outlines his five-step plan to help school and trust leaders prepare
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 – better known as Martyn’s Law – was passed in April last year, extending responsibility for counter-terrorism preparedness to a wide range of public places; spaces that include early years, schools and further education settings.
As of now, its new duties – covering lockdowns, evacuation, invacuation and wider preparedness – are not yet in force. This is because the government has allowed a two-year implementation period, pushing enforcement into early to mid-2027.
It’s a gap that was created to give organisations time to prepare but was never to be treated as ‘breathing space’. And the context matters. The UK’s 2023 counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, describes the threat landscape as “enduring and evolving”, with risks that are increasingly domestic, less predictable and harder to detect.
Coupled with this, a string of recent lockdown incidents have hit headlines (from violent students to nearby shootings), and our own stats at LGB (enquiries from the UK education sector roughly tripled in the final quarter of 2025) show that the issue is far from distant.
With roughly a year left before expectations begin to bite, it’s time for schools and colleges to use the remaining time to test plans, tech and staff and to work out what lockdown readiness actually looks like in practice.
Five-step Plan to get Prepared
With the above in mind, I would urge all educational settings to consider the following five steps now:
Ringfence time to properly assess vulnerability and space: The biggest challenge for schools and trusts is to move from reactive to proactive, ringfencing time to properly assess their safety risk, technology and current policies to build an embedded safety culture. But identifying the specific risks your school faces – such as intruders, aggressive individuals or incidents in the local area – and how these risks change at different points in the day, is an essential place to start. Using a plan of the site, walk the perimeter and internal spaces with a critical eye, considering the weakest points and how an attacker might gain access.
Consider a lockdown-alert system: Part of the assessment should be set aside for technology, looking at what you currently have in place and what you might benefit from adding. Many schools, for example, still rely on fire alarms to cover a wide range of emergency situations, often using different durations or patterns as distinct signals. In a real emergency, this can create confusion, remove context and add a layer of unnecessary risk.
Despite this, and the fact the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) specifically advises against using fire alarms during lockdown events, the government and Ofsted are not making a lockdown alarm system mandatory.
Without clear national standards or requirements, schools are left to interpret risk individually which can lead to inconsistent or potentially inappropriate approaches to protection. This is why I always advise that education settings either put a lockdown alarm system to be in place to protect students and staff, or at a minimum, ensure emergency alerts can be clearly distinguished between different types of incidents so staff and students know how to respond.
Use technology in different ways: The added benefit of a lockdown alarm is that while extremely useful in lockdown scenarios, the same technology can support a wide range of safeguarding applications. They can be used for medical emergencies, behavioural incidents, safeguarding concerns as well as site-wide communication during unexpected events. These systems are there to complement other security measures such as fire alarms and CCTV, not replace them as they each have their own application and benefit.
Create a solid lockdown plan: Consider time, control and simplicity, including designated roles, communication protocols and predetermined safe zones. Your procedure should be simple enough to follow under stress and flexible enough to work during different parts of the school day.
Challenge your process and put your plan to the test: Schools and trusts are stretched by competing priorities and tight budgets, so safety measures or emergency plans are often assessed against whether existing arrangements feel ‘adequate’. Unfortunately, it often takes an incident to make people question and challenge their security process, at which point the opportunity to prevent harm has already passed. This is why it’s so important to run practice drills at least annually, and especially after any significant change to your policy or procedures. Also, remember to train any new staff in your lockdown procedures as part of their induction.
Benefits to Early Preparedness
Proactive planning reduces risk, avoids last-minute pressure and ensures students, staff and parents have confidence in emergency procedures. It also means everyone remains as safe as possible if and when an incident does occur. And, on top of all that, one of the major benefits to planning now is Ofsted-related.
As things stand, the regulator’s guidance on lockdown procedures is vague, and many unions such as NASUWT argue that there should be much more advice available to school business leaders and teams. Safety shouldn’t vary by postcode, but with the rule changes on the horizon, my hope is that clear compulsory standards will remove the ambiguity causing confusion for school and trust leaders and ensuring staff and students have a consistent level of protection across the entire education system.
So, while the changes may feel like some time away, the time to act is now. Not only does having clear procedures, appropriate technology, and the right tools demonstrate a strong commitment and culture of safeguarding, it is increasingly important to inspection outcomes and provide a significant boost to staff wellbeing and confidence.
