If an event is part of the normal running of the site, it does not sit as a standalone qualifying event under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. That is the line the statutory guidance draws, and for places of worship and faith communities it settles most of the calendar.

It is a two-sided answer. Regularly held weddings, funerals and festival days are normal running, so they are not a separate compliance exercise — but their numbers do have to be factored into what it is reasonable to expect on your site from time to time. The reassuring half of the answer is the half that raises your headcount.

The distinction is not between big days and quiet days. It is between an occasion that is part of how the site normally runs and an occasion that is not.

An event that is part of the normal running of the site does not sit as a standalone qualifying event. It is simply the site doing what the site does, on a day when more people are there.

Take the clearest example. If a place of worship regularly holds weddings, those weddings are seen as normal running of the site. They are not standalone qualifying events, and there is no separate process sitting alongside them.

Funerals sit in the same place. So do the festival days that a tradition builds its year around, where they are part of what the site is for. The test is regularity and purpose, not scale.

Here is where the answer stops being purely reassuring. Because those days are normal running, the people at them are part of what you reasonably expect on site.

You should always factor in the numbers of people you would expect to see at a wedding, for example, when you are working out what it is reasonable to find on your site from time to time. The peak day feeds the ordinary threshold test rather than sitting outside it.

That is why “we only get big numbers a few times a year” is not the answer people expect it to be. The threshold is 200 or more individuals reasonably expected on site from time to time — not on an average day. A foreseeable peak is exactly what “from time to time” describes, and for a great many places of worship it is the peak days that carry the number past 200.

The other side of the line is a site being taken over purely for an event that is not its normal running.

The guidance’s shape of example is a large space hired out for something it is not ordinarily used for — an art gallery holding a music event because it is a big room, put on by an organisation that does not normally own or run the site. That is a standalone event, because it is outside the normal running of the premises and it is effectively being controlled by another organisation.

Two features are doing the work there: the use is not what the site is normally for, and control has passed to somebody else. Where both are true, the occasion is assessed in its own right rather than as part of the site’s ordinary expected attendance.

In practice the answer comes down to a short pair of questions asked about each occasion in the calendar:

• Is this part of how the site normally runs? Regularly held weddings, funerals and festival days generally are. A one-off use the building was never intended for generally is not.
• Who is actually in control? If another organisation has taken the site over and is running the occasion, that points towards a standalone event.
• If it is normal running: the numbers belong in your estimate of what is reasonably expected on site from time to time.
• If it is standalone: it is looked at separately, and it is worth settling the position for that occasion specifically rather than assuming it follows the site.

None of this requires a precise count. The duty is to make a reasonable estimate, using what you already know — the attendance those days usually produce, those leading and working, and everyone volunteering. Our Am I in Scope? tool asks for the attendance you expect and returns your scope position.

Once the answer is yes, the duty is four public protection procedures — evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication, as four distinct items — in place so far as is reasonably practicable. Nothing is submitted to the regulator for approval at standard tier, but they have to be evidenceable on inspection.

Prova Risk builds all four around your site, holds the training and exercise records against them, and produces a single compliance document you can put in front of a regulator. £399 per year per site.

• Counting peak attendance rather than a normal day
• Counting attendance without a clicker on the door
• Capacity is not the same as expected attendance
• Are places of worship exempt from Martyn’s Law?
• The 200-person threshold under Martyn’s Law
• Martyn’s Law for places of worship and faith communities
• Martyn’s Law hub