The is the Protect Duty
The Government is proposing to introduce a new Protect Duty in 2023. This legislation, and the changes it brings, will enhance the protection of the United Kingdom’s publicly accessible places from terrorist attacks and ensure that businesses and organisations are prepared to deal with incidents.
As we’ve seen in recent years, there has been an increase in terrorist attacks in publicly accessible locations – anywhere that people visit, congregate in, or pass through. One of the main features of these attacks is the targeting of people.
Any publicly accessible location is a potential target, so it is essential that owners and operators of all such locations understand the risks faced and consider appropriate mitigations. The key initial steps to understanding this threat and risk are:
- Understanding the terrorist threat – understanding that motivations, targets and attack methods vary, and change over time
- Understanding the specific risks the threat poses to your site and/or organisation, and how and why your site or organisation might be affected – either by being targeted directly, or indirectly because of its proximity to neighbouring sites, businesses or organisations.
Read more about the Protect Duty and the recent consultation
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 your building or site.
Training and guidance
To help your organisation, venue and employees to be prepared, a wide range of training options are available:
- Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) training – provides a good introduction on how to respond to suspicious activity: Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) E-Learning; to access this, email training@arenalearning.co.uk
- ACT app – sends real-time news and counterterrorism (CT) incident updates from UK Protect, contains the latest practical advice and guidance to help you protect your business, as well as information on how to respond in the event of an attack): Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) app
- Prevent training – designed to safeguard and support vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism; to access this, email training@arenalearning.co.uk
- SCAN training – helps businesses and organisations maximise safety and security using their existing resources
- ACT Strategic SessionTraining – provided by the Counterterrorism Security Advisers (CTSA); if businesses are interested in attending please email training@arenalearning.co.uk to discuss and arrange.
There is also a series of guidance available: