Martyn's Law and the paperwork problem: how a spatial record helps
The Protect Duty asks venues and premises to understand their own vulnerabilities and plan for them. That starts with actually knowing your site, not just believing you do.
Martyn's Law, the Protect Duty, asks qualifying premises and events to take proportionate steps to reduce the risk from a terrorist attack, and to be able to show they have genuinely thought about their own vulnerabilities rather than filed a generic template. For a lot of security teams, the hardest part is not disagreeing with the intent, it is producing evidence that their planning is grounded in their actual, current site.
The gap between believing you know a site and proving it
A Security Director who has worked a site for years often does know its vulnerabilities well. What is harder is demonstrating that knowledge in a form a regulator, an insurer or a board can review, especially when the site has changed since the last formal review, a new entrance, a reconfigured public area, a fence line moved for a temporary event.
What a current twin actually contributes
A dated, accurate 3D model of the site gives a Risk Manager a documented basis for vulnerability mapping, tied to the site as it currently stands rather than as it stood at the last formal assessment. Combined with camera coverage and blind spot analysis, covered earlier in this series, it becomes a genuinely defensible record of the thinking behind a site's security planning, not just a policy document written once and left unreviewed.
What this does not do: it does not satisfy the Protect Duty on its own, and it is not a substitute for competent security risk assessment. It is evidence that supports that assessment, current and specific to the actual site, rather than generic.
Camera coverage planning and blind spot analysis, the other half of this picture, is covered earlier in this series. Read that post if you missed it, or see the wider case on our Security vertical page.
Talk to us about Protect Duty readiness
If your premises fall under Martyn's Law, we can talk through what a spatial evidence base would look like for your specific site.
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