Martyn's Law: The Compliance Challenge Facing Non-League Football

A lone steward in a dark green high-visibility jacket and flat cap stands from behind at an open green pedestrian gate on the right edge of a modest, tidy Step 4 English non-league ground at blue-hour dusk, with rows of empty dark green and white tip-up seats under a corrugated covered stand and a shuttered brick tea hut to the left, green-and-white bunting and a knotted green-and-white supporters' scarf on the foreground rail, and red-brick terraced rooftops, modern parked cars and cool white LED street lamps beyond; no face, no text, no crest.

When a law named after someone who died in a terrorist attack arrives in your inbox as a compliance requirement, it is natural to assume the burden falls entirely on stadium security and emergency protocols. At non-league level, where the entire club operation might be run by twelve volunteers who also fold the programmes and mow the pitch, that assumption can quickly curdle into dread.

But according to The Non-League Paper's Mark Harris, Martyn's Law — formally the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act — could reshape the landscape of grassroots football in ways that reach well beyond metal detectors and lockdown drills. Understanding why requires looking at what the law actually demands, and who it demands it from.

What Martyn's Law Actually Requires

Martyn Hett was among those killed in the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017. His mother, Figen Murray, spent years campaigning for legislation that would force public venues to take terrorism preparedness seriously. The result — the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, which received Royal Assent in 2025 — creates a tiered duty framework for venues and events above specified capacity thresholds.

The legislation splits obligations into two tiers. Smaller venues face a standard duty: document your procedures, train relevant staff, have a workable plan if something goes wrong. Larger venues — those meeting the higher capacity threshold, which takes in a significant share of EFL grounds and the bigger non-league stadiums — face an enhanced duty, encompassing more detailed security planning, a designated responsible person, and more formal liaison with police and local authorities.

The critical word in both tiers is "duty." This is not guidance a club can file and forget. It is a legal obligation, with enforcement behind it.

Bigger Than Terrorism

Here is where Harris's argument becomes most interesting. The law requires clubs to formally document their emergency and safety plans. It requires someone to own that documentation. It requires training records to be kept. It requires a named responsible person who can be held accountable.

For clubs that have operated for decades on handshakes, institutional memory, and a drawer full of photocopied rosters, that is a meaningful structural shift. Not because the content is unfamiliar — most clubs informally know what to do if someone has a cardiac arrest or a crowd disturbance breaks out — but because formalising it creates a paper trail, a governance layer, and a culture of accountability that many smaller clubs simply have not needed to construct before.

Insurance underwriters have taken note. As the law beds in, there is a reasonable expectation that clubs unable to demonstrate compliance — or at least documented good-faith efforts — will find their premiums moving in an unhelpful direction. The law does not just affect what happens on a match day. It affects what you can afford to do at all.

The Volunteer Question

Here is the uncomfortable tension at the heart of Martyn's Law for non-league football: the law is sensible and right, and simultaneously asks a great deal of people who are already giving almost everything they have.

The volunteer co-ordinator who runs the bar, handles the safeguarding training, chases the pitch inspection paperwork, and emails the match secretary about the referee's fee is now also the person responsible for maintaining a terrorism preparedness plan. The law designates a "responsible person" for compliance. At most clubs below the National League, that responsible person is already wearing eight other hats.

This is not an argument against the legislation. It is an argument for resourcing its implementation properly. Clubs that dismiss the requirement as someone else's problem — that assume Martyn's Law is for concert arenas and Premier League grounds, not Step 4 pitches with a corrugated metal stand and a tea hut — may find themselves exposed, legally and practically, before they have had time to think.

The smarter approach is to treat compliance as a forcing function for something clubs routinely defer: writing things down properly. Emergency procedures. Stewarding protocols. Evacuation plans. Safeguarding contacts. Effectively, the law is requiring clubs to produce the operational documentation that well-run organisations have always maintained, and that the grassroots game has historically managed without. That shift in itself has value that outlasts any given piece of legislation.

Planning Ahead — and Funding It

The law's implementation timeline gives clubs breathing room to act rather than react. Compliance is not an overnight task, but it is achievable with structured planning, and the Football Association and county FAs are expected to support clubs working through their obligations.

The cost question, though, is real. Training courses for designated responsible persons carry fees. Physical upgrades — improved signage, communication systems, lighting improvements — may be required or strongly advisable depending on a ground's configuration. For clubs operating on margins where a failed boiler can threaten the season, these are not trivial sums.

Community fundraising has quietly become one of the most effective tools non-league clubs have for covering exactly this kind of legitimate but unanticipated expenditure. Platforms built specifically for grassroots clubs — running online lotteries and prize draws — have helped supporters raise funds for everything from floodlight repairs to kit sponsorship. Compliance costs may be less glamorous than a new dugout, but they keep clubs operational. Increasingly, supporters understand that.

The title of Mark Harris's piece contains a quiet understatement. Martyn's Law could change the landscape. It almost certainly will — partly because it demands change, partly because it creates an opportunity for clubs to finally build the administrative foundations their communities deserve. The game below the pyramid has long been run on goodwill and late-night spreadsheets. The law is asking it to grow up, gently but firmly.

That is not a threat to the soul of non-league football. Done right, it is part of protecting it.