Sectors

Education and childcare.

Schools, colleges and nurseries are standard duty premises whatever their roll. Universities are not. That single distinction determines most of what follows.

01 — The line that matters

Two categories, treated differently.

Schedule 1 to the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 treats education unevenly, and the division is not intuitive. Four categories are fixed at standard duty “regardless of how they would otherwise be treated”, so the 800 threshold cannot reach them at any capacity. One is not.

Capped

Standard duty, whatever the roll

Early years and childcare (paragraph 13), primary and secondary education (paragraph 14), and further education (paragraph 15). A six-form-entry secondary with two thousand on site is standard duty.

Not capped

Higher education

Paragraph 16 fixes who the Responsible Person is — the governing body — but says nothing as to tier. A university venue reaches the enhanced duty on numbers like any other premises.

A students’ union venue, a graduation hall or a large university lecture theatre can therefore sit in the enhanced tier while a considerably larger secondary school does not. Enhanced-tier work quoted to a multi-academy trust on headcount is not work Schedule 1 requires.

02 — Who carries the duty

Schedule 1 names the Responsible Person.

For most premises the Responsible Person follows from who controls the site. Education is one of the cases in which the Act is explicit, which removes a common argument before it arises.

  • Pupil referral units — the maintaining local authority.
  • Other primary and secondary institutions — the governing body, or the proprietor where there is no governing body.
  • Higher education — the governing body of the institution.

For a multi-academy trust this repays careful reading: the duty attaches per premises, and “governing body” carries a statutory meaning. Which body holds it for each site should be settled on paper rather than assumed to sit with the trust board.

03 — In practice

Existing practice covers most of it.

Schools are the sector best placed to meet the standard duty, because the habits already exist. Fire drills are routine. Lockdown procedures are widely in place. Registers establish who is on site. Staff are accustomed to being briefed and to following a procedure under pressure.

The gaps commonly found are narrow:

  • An invacuation procedure that exists in practice but has never been recorded as distinct from evacuation.
  • No record of what supply staff, visitors and contractors are told, or when.
  • Lettings — the hall hired at weekends — assessed by neither the school nor the hirer.
  • Procedures written for the building as designed rather than as extended.

None of that is expensive to remedy. All of it is the difference between holding arrangements and being able to evidence them.

04 — Engagement

What an engagement produces here.

Schools already hold most of what the standard duty asks for. The work is establishing which category applies, then closing narrow gaps and recording what already happens.

  • The category and the Responsible Person for each site, stated in writing.
  • Invacuation recorded as distinct from evacuation.
  • Lettings, visitors and contractors brought inside the arrangements.
  • A briefing record that covers supply staff as well as the permanent team.

Scoped to the premises, never to a package, and stated as a fixed fee before work begins — see how an engagement runs.

Next

Establish which category applies.

The scope checker distinguishes capped education uses from higher education, so it will not return a tier the Act does not impose.

Review your scope