The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 – also known as Martyn’s Law – has shifted the conversation around venue security in the UK from voluntary best practice to legal obligation. For many operators, the immediate question is what compliance looks like in practical terms. The answer is more nuanced than it first appears, and the venues that understand that nuance will be better positioned than those treating this as a box to check.
The legislation requires venues to take measures that are both “proportionate and reasonable”. Those two words are doing a lot of work. They signal that the legislation is not simply mandating the installation of any available security technology. It is asking operators to think carefully about whether their security approach actually delivers protection… and whether it creates new problems in the process.
That distinction matters because most venues across the UK are still relying primarily on manual search processes rather than dedicated screening technology. As legislation tightens and the threat landscape shifts, venues are moving toward 100 percent attendee searches — and the pressure that puts on entry operations is significant. Queue times are growing, fan experience is suffering, and the security measures meant to protect people are creating their own crowd safety concerns at venue entrances. Entry queues that stretch back into public areas, understaffed screening lanes that create dangerous crowding, and alert-heavy technology that teaches security staff to treat most alerts as noise are not proportionate or reasonable responses to a genuine threat environment.
What Personal Belongings Mean for AI-Powered Screening
The venue-goer of today arrives with considerably more on their person than the venue-goer of twenty years ago. A smartphone is standard. Many people carry a second device, a smartwatch, and even sometimes a portable charger as a matter of routine. None of these items are threats, but conventional metal detection technology cannot tell the difference between a personal electronic and a concealed weapon. It detects metal. That is the full extent of what it does.
The operational consequence is a secondary screening workload that is disproportionate to the actual threat. Security staff spend the bulk of their time investigating alerts that resolve into phones and keys. The genuine threats that screening is designed to catch receive no more scrutiny than the innocuous ones. That is not a staffing problem. It is a technology selection problem, and Martyn’s Law compliance built on that concept will not deliver the protection the legislation intends.
AI-powered weapons detection approaches this differently.
Rather than alerting on metal broadly, it identifies specific threat objects. A phone is recognized as a phone. A concealed firearm or blade generates a very different response. The alert rate drops dramatically, and the alerts that do occur are meaningful. Security staff can focus their attention where it belongs.
The British Museum’s selection of SmartGateway earlier this year is a useful reference point for UK venues thinking through these decisions. The institution required a solution capable of processing millions of annual visitors without creating the kind of entry bottleneck that would compromise the experience it has built over centuries. Testing at the venue demonstrated throughput of approximately 750 people per 15-minute interval per lane, with detection performance that materially exceeded prior screening methods. The system’s portable design also allowed security teams to adjust screening perimeters based on event profile and visitor volume. Both of those capabilities matter for Martyn’s Law compliance in ways that go beyond the basic detection requirement.
The People Side of Compliance
Technology selection is only part of what Martyn’s Law preparation requires. The legislation places responsibility on the venue, not the system, which means the people operating that technology carry significant weight in whether compliance is meaningful or nominal.
Security staff working high-volume entry points make dozens of decisions per shift about how to respond to alerts, when to escalate, and how to interact with attendees who are frustrated, confused, or non-compliant. Decisions need to be grounded in documented procedures that are consistently followed regardless of who is working. Consistency is genuinely difficult to achieve when the technology generates more alerts than staff can thoughtfully assess. It becomes considerably more achievable when alert volume reflects actual threat signals rather than the full range of personal electronics that venue-goers carry through the door.
Staff training and documented operating procedures are areas where venues typically underinvest relative to the technology itself. Martyn’s Law creates an opportunity to address that imbalance, and the venues that do will build security operations that hold up under scrutiny and improve over time.
Proportionate Security and Crowd Safety
The proportionality requirement in Martyn’s Law has a dimension that is easy to overlook. Security measures that create dangerous crowding at venue entrances are themselves a safety concern. A lengthy, bottlenecked entry process concentrates large numbers of people in a confined public space for extended periods. That creates vulnerability, not protection. Measures that are unworkable in practice, that staff routinely shortcut because operational reality demands it, do not deliver their intended outcome regardless of how much was spent on them.
Venues that have deployed AI-powered detection consistently report that the operational benefits compound over time in ways they did not fully anticipate at the outset. Entry becomes faster and more predictable. Staffing decisions become data-driven as throughput metrics surface patterns that were previously invisible. The security operation improves in quality as staff attention shifts from managing constant false alerts to genuine threat assessment.
Those outcomes are not incidental. They are what proportionate and reasonable security looks like when the technology is matched to the operational environment.
Planning Now
Martyn’s Law implementation timelines require venues to act before the requirements feel urgent. From initial site assessment through installation, staff training, and operational refinement, a properly implemented AI-powered screening program takes time to do well. Venues that begin that process now will have the operational experience and refined procedures in place when compliance requirements take full effect. Those that wait will be implementing under pressure, with less time to pilot technology, train staff, and address the site-specific considerations that every venue presents differently.
The legislation is asking UK venues to take security seriously in a way that actually works. The technology to meet that standard exists and is operating in some of the highest-profile venues in the world.
Xtract One provides AI-powered weapons detection for high-traffic venues and major cultural institutions including the British Museum. To discuss how our systems support Martyn’s Law compliance at your venue, contact us at sales@xtractone.com.