Sectors
Culture and attractions.
Libraries, museums, galleries, visitor attractions and venues for hire. Free entry makes no difference to scope, and the buildings least suited to hardening are often the most exposed.
01 — Three specified uses
Where you sit in Schedule 1.
- Paragraph 5 — use as a library, museum or gallery where admittance is principally to visiting members of the public.
- Paragraph 6 — use as a venue for hire for events or activities, an exhibition hall, or a conference centre.
- Paragraph 7 — use as a visitor attraction of cultural, historic, touristic or educational value.
None of these carries a tier cap, so the ordinary thresholds apply in full. A national museum is comfortably enhanced duty; a market-town library will ordinarily fall below 200 and be out of scope on capacity.
Charging for entry does not remove you from scope
Schedule 1 paragraph 18 settles a recurring question. In determining whether premises are used by visiting members of the public, it is irrelevant that access may be limited — at all times or at particular times — to people who have paid, hold tickets or passes, or are members or guests of a club, association or similar body.
A paid-admission attraction, a ticketed exhibition and a members-only gallery are therefore all still used by visiting members of the public. Ticketing is not a route out of scope.
Free admission does not alter the position either, for a simpler reason: the section 2 test asks about Schedule 1 use and numbers present. It says nothing of payment. Payment becomes decisive in only two places — the Schedule 2 open-air exclusion, and the qualifying-events test in section 3 — and neither applies to an ordinary indoor attraction.
02 — The substantive difficulty
Buildings that resist hardening.
This sector carries a tension worth naming, because the alternative produces procedures that are not followed.
- Listed and historic fabric. Many of these buildings cannot be altered. Physical measures routine elsewhere are simply unavailable, which transfers the weight onto procedure and staff — and makes documenting why a measure was rejected as disproportionate genuinely important.
- Openness is the purpose. A library made difficult to enter has damaged the thing it exists for. Proportionality is not a loophole here; it is the correct analysis.
- Volunteers and small teams. Front-of-house is often volunteer-staffed, rotating, and not employed. They still need to know what to do, and a record is still required that they were told.
- Occupancy that spikes. A quiet gallery on a Tuesday is a different premises during a late opening, a school visit or an exhibition launch — and the test asks what may be expected from time to time.
03 — Venues for hire
Two duties, not one.
Where space is hired out, the two questions must be kept apart. The premises has its own position under section 2, based on ordinary use. A hirer’s ticketed event is assessed separately under section 3 — 800 or more present at the same time, with entry controlled by payment, ticket, pass or membership.
That second duty attaches to whoever is responsible for the event, which may not be the venue. Establishing it in the hire agreement, before anyone needs to rely on it, is considerably easier than establishing it afterwards.
04 — Engagement
Proportionality, written down.
Where a building cannot be hardened, the reasoning behind each decision is the evidence. Unrecorded, it is only an opinion.
- The position under paragraph 5, 6 or 7, and the tier that follows.
- Procedures that work with volunteer front-of-house and fabric that cannot be altered.
- A record of each measure considered and rejected as disproportionate, and why.
- The split between the venue’s duty and a hirer’s, settled in the hire agreement.
Scoped to the premises, never to a package, and stated as a fixed fee before work begins — see how an engagement runs.
Next
Use your busiest day.
The figure from a late opening or an exhibition launch, not an ordinary weekday. That is what the test requires.