Business and investment Action Counters Terrorism

What the Protect Duty means for you

Who the proposed Protect Duty applies to

There are three main areas it will potentially apply to:

  • Public venues (eg. entertainment and sports venues, tourist attractions, shopping centres with a capacity of 100 persons or more)
  • Large organisations (eg. retail or entertainment chains employing 250 staff or more that operate at publicly accessible locations)
  • Public spaces (eg. public parks, beaches, thoroughfares, bridges, town/city squares and pedestrianised areas). This includes event organisers using these spaces.

How the proposed Protect Duty affects you or your business/organisation

The Government considers that the owners and operators of public venues and large organisations should be required to:

  • Use available information and guidance provided by the Government and the police to consider terrorist threats to the public and staff at locations they own or operate
  • Assess the potential impact of these risks across their functions and estate, and through their systems and processes
  • Consider and implement ‘reasonably practicable’ protective security and organisational preparedness measures (eg. developing a strategy that ensures you have assessed your site and its use, including suitable mitigation measures to protect staff, as well as staff training, and plans for how to react in the event of an attack)
  • Develop a robust plan on how to deal with or act as a result of a terrorist attack.

For smaller organisations and venues, this would involve simple low-cost (or no-cost) preparedness measures, such as ensuring that:

  • Staff are trained and aware of threats, likely attack methods and how to respond
  • Staff are trained to identify the signs of hostile reconnaissance and to take appropriate action
  • The organisation’s response to different attack types is regularly updated and exercised.

How to prepare

Consider what you and your colleagues can do to make it harder for a would-be terrorist to carry out a successful attack by:

  • Being alert to suspicious behaviour and activity in and around your site, such as people loitering or displaying an unusual level of interest in asking questions, filming or photographing
  • Assessing the possible vulnerabilities of your site to various attack methods, and taking suitable measures to mitigate the risks
  • Being security-minded in your communications, particularly online
  • Encouraging and enabling a security culture in the workplace, eg. ensuring that any concerns can easily be reported and will be acted upon
  • Considering how you and your staff would respond to an incident occurring inside, outside, or near to your building or site.

For further info on the ACT programme, please visit the ACT website

Find out more about training and resources available to you

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