The four procedures explained: evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication

Section 5 of the Act requires written procedures to be followed by people working at your premises if there is reason to suspect that an act of terrorism is occurring, or is about to occur.

The Act describes four, and describes them by what they achieve rather than by name:

• (a) evacuating individuals from the premises
• (b) moving individuals to a place on the premises where there is less risk of physical harm
• (c) preventing individuals entering or leaving the premises
• (d) providing information to individuals on the premises

In practice these are called evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication. Here is what each actually means, and what a workable one looks like for a village hall rather than a stadium.

1. Evacuation — getting people out

You almost certainly have a fire evacuation plan. It is not the same thing, and this is the single most important point in this guide.

A fire plan does one thing extremely well: it moves everyone by the shortest route to a single assembly point, usually the car park. That is exactly the wrong instinct if the danger is outside that door.

What a terrorism-aware evacuation procedure adds:

• At least one alternative route, and the trigger for choosing it.
• At least one alternative assembly point, away from the obvious one.
• A note of who decides which route to use, by role.

For a hall with a main entrance and a kitchen fire exit, that might be two sentences: normally out of the front to the car park; if the danger is at the front, out through the kitchen to the churchyard, decided by whoever is running the event.

2. Invacuation — moving people somewhere safer inside

This is the one most venues have never considered, because fire planning trains the opposite reflex.

Invacuation means moving people to a place on the premises where there is less risk of physical harm. If the threat is outside — a vehicle, a disturbance in the street, something happening in the car park — then putting a hundred people out of the front door and into it is the worst available option.

A useful invacuation procedure names:

• Where. A specific room. Ideally away from external glazing, with a door that closes, and reachable from the main space without going outside.
• How people are told to go there, given that "stay inside" is counterintuitive.
• What happens to people who arrive at the building while it is in progress.

For most small venues the answer is a back room, a committee room, or a hall kitchen. It does not need to be a designated safe room. It needs to be somewhere specific, so that nobody is choosing under pressure.

3. Lockdown — preventing people entering or leaving

Lockdown is about controlling the boundary. Securing doors, stopping new arrivals, and holding people where they are until told otherwise.

The practical questions a procedure has to answer:

• Which doors, and are they lockable from the inside without a key?
• Who has the keys, and where are they when that person is not there?
• What about people outside who are trying to get in — including latecomers who have no idea anything is happening?

This is where volunteer-run venues often find a genuine gap. A hall where the only key lives on the caretaker's personal keyring has a lockdown procedure that works on the days the caretaker is in.

4. Communication — telling people what is happening

Communication has three audiences, and procedures that only address one are the most common weakness.

Your people. How does the person who notices something tell everyone else? In a building where you cannot shout across the room, or where a band is playing, "tell the others" is not a method. A phrase agreed in advance, a group message, or a specific person to find are all methods.

The public. What do you actually say? Agreeing a short form of words in advance is worth more than it sounds. Under pressure people either say nothing or say too much.

The emergency services. Who meets them, where, and what do they need to be told first? The number of people inside, where they are, and what is known — in that order.

What a good procedure looks like

The statutory guidance expects standard tier procedures to be proportionate. A single-room hall with two exits does not need what an arena needs, and nothing in the Act asks for it.

Good ones tend to share four qualities:

1. Specific to the building. Named rooms, named doors, real routes. A template with "[VENUE NAME]" left in it has not been thought about.
2. Short. Long enough to be complete, short enough that a volunteer can take it in during an incident.
3. Role-based, not name-based. "The duty manager", not "Sue" — because Sue leaves, and the procedure should not leave with her.
4. Decision points named. Who chooses between evacuation and invacuation. The most common failure in a real incident is nobody deciding.

Where people go wrong

Copying a template without editing it. An unedited template is worse than nothing: it looks like compliance and provides none.

Writing only the evacuation procedure. It is the familiar one, so it gets written and the other three get a sentence each. Invacuation and lockdown are the two that most change what people do.

Writing them and never mentioning them again. The Act requires that people working at the premises are aware of the procedures and can follow them. A document nobody has read does not meet that duty — see staff awareness: what the law actually requires.

Getting yours written

The procedures are a one-time piece of work. Keeping people aware of them is the part that continues.

If you would rather not start from a blank page, VenueCompliant asks about your building — how many exits, whether there is a room away from glazing, who is on site, whether you host events after dark — and produces all four procedures written around those answers, with each section citing the part of the guidance it comes from.

Start with the scope checker to confirm the duties apply to you at all.