Who can assess whether your PA or voice alarm meets Martyn's Law's communication requirements?

What the assessment covers

One visit, out of hours where messages are to be broadcast, with the system's documents in hand. Nine questions, each answered area by area and written down.

1. Messages. Which non-fire messages the system holds, their wording, where they are stored and whether that storage is monitored for faults.
2. Selection. From which positions a security message can be started, who can reach them during an incident, and whether the fire microphone is the only one. The fire microphone position is fixed by the fire strategy. Security scenarios may need selection from a second position. A consideration, not necessarily a fault.
3. Attention signal. Whether security messages are preceded by a signal that visitors can tell from the fire alarm. If a lockdown message is preceded by the fire alarm signal, people may evacuate into the area you are trying to move them away from.
4. Zones. Whether the zone schedule matches the procedures: can one area be told to stay while another is told to leave, as the guidance asks larger venues to consider for partial and zonal lockdowns (paras 7.43 and 7.45), and can staff areas be addressed on their own.
5. Coverage. Every area walked during a broadcast, including kitchens, plant rooms, stores, loading bays, offices, toilets, lift lobbies and external queuing areas, and each one recorded as: message heard and followable, heard but not followable, or not heard.
6. Priority and conflict. What the system does if the fire alarm operates during a lockdown, and what the doors do (para 7.44).
7. Fallback. What still works on mains failure, out of hours, and when the control room is unstaffed.
8. Rehearsal and records. Whether non-fire messages have ever been tested and staff trained to use them, and whether the logbook shows it.
9. Documents. Whether the zone plan, commissioning certificates and logbook that BS 5839-8:2023 expects to be held on the premises (Clauses 34 to 37 and 42) exist and match the system as found.

What the assessment is not

• Not a compliance certificate. Only the SIA can determine compliance, and it has said that neither it nor the Home Office endorses or recommends any company or service. Any provider offering "Martyn's Law certification" is offering something no regulator has defined.
• Not a terrorism risk assessment, and not legal advice. Those remain the venue's own.
• Not a speech intelligibility measurement. The assessment answers a plainer question: in each area, does the message arrive, can it be told apart from the fire alarm, and can the people there act on it. Where a room is too loud for speech, the report says so and proposes a non-acoustic fix for that room.
• Not a review of the fire detection system. The fire strategy and the detection side stay with your fire alarm contractor.

What you receive

A report that sets out for each of the three procedures what the system can deliver today, and for each gap, what closes it and at what scale:

• a configuration change (a message recorded, a zone reassigned, a second selection position enabled);
• a small addition to the existing system (loudspeakers in a staff corridor, an attention signal, a control panel at reception);
• a procedural fix that is the venue's to make (a radio for the one room no loudspeaker will serve, a named role, a rehearsal);
• or, rarely, the plain statement that the building needs a system it does not have, with a specification brief you can take to tender. ProAudium does not bid in open tenders for major new-build installations, and the assessment is quoted separately from any work that follows it, so that finding carries no order behind it.

Because remediation work is quoted separately, there is no incentive to miss anything, and every reason to find it. You can give the report to your own contractor unchanged.

Who carries it out

The technicians who do the assessment specialise in voice alarm and emergency sound systems: no fire detection, no open tenders for major new-build installations. ProAudium's clients include Gatwick Airport, Olympia London, Fulham FC, the Brighton Centre and Drusillas. ProAudium has worked to BS 5839-8 since 2009, is certified to ISO 9001:2015 and is a member of the Institute of Sound, Communications and Visual Engineers (ISCVE), and covers London and the South East, plus ships and offshore facilities along the south coast from Dover to Plymouth.

None of that makes the assessment a compliance verdict. It makes it a technical answer you can check against your own building.

How it runs

1. The conversation. Call or use the contact form. Useful to have to hand: the type of system (sounders, voice alarm or PA), the venue, the peak number of people on site, and which of the four procedures are in writing.
2. Documents in advance. The zone plan, the last commissioning or inspection certificate, the last service report and the draft procedures, if they exist. If some can't be found, that's fine: it becomes the first finding.
3. The visit. Out of hours where messages are to be broadcast. The walk covers every area, including the ones the fire strategy only ever gave a sounder.
4. The report. Findings per area, fixes per gap, and the documents list, in a form you can hand to a board, the Safety Advisory Group or your own contractor.

The assessment is quoted before the visit. Remedial work, if any, is quoted separately.

Start the conversationOr call 01273 034 630.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a Martyn's Law compliance certificate?
No. Compliance with the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 will be assessed by the SIA once the Act is in force, and the SIA has said it cannot endorse or recommend companies or services. The assessment is a technical statement of what your existing PA or voice alarm can and cannot deliver, which is evidence you can use; it is not a verdict on compliance.

Do we need this before the Act commences?
Not legally. The Act's duties on venues are not yet in force. The SIA expects them to come into force in spring 2027. No date has been set. The reason to assess now is lead time: recording messages, changing zones or adding loudspeakers to a staff area takes time to arrange, and the procedures cannot be rehearsed until the system can deliver them.

What happens if our system cannot deliver the procedures?
The report says which procedure it cannot deliver, where, and what the smallest fix is. Where a building has sounders only, the report compares the options, including a separate lockdown alert for a small building, and leaves the decision with the venue.

Can our existing maintainer do this?
Yes, if they maintain the voice alarm and can answer three questions from its documents: which non-fire messages it holds, which zones cover the back-of-house areas, and from where a message can be selected. Ask them first. If the answers are not available, an assessment is the way to get them.

Where this comes from

This page describes a technical assessment of an existing sound system. It is not legal advice, not a terrorism risk assessment and not a determination of compliance, which only the SIA can make.