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News
Supporting the Duty to Protect.
07/07/2021
A more safe and secure built environment for all.
The government recently launched a consultation into new legislation that will impose a ‘duty to protect’ (known as Martyn’s Law) on certain public amenities.
This proposed legislation will require the owner or operator of a publicly accessible space, inside or out, to have due regard to the potential consequences of terrorism in its design and operation. It’s a welcome opportunity to improve public safety at accessible locations, and – importantly – elevates security to the level of other safety-related considerations for a development.
This will clearly have a significant impact on the built environment and is likely to make security an increasingly important issue for our clients. As such, our Security team has been formulating a response to the consultation and supporting those organisations that will be promoting and enforcing it.
The aim of the legislation is to make the built environment a safer and more secure place. This lies at the heart of what we do as “engineers of human experiences” and is something that we strongly support.
“As a member of the Register of Security Engineers and Specialists (RSES), I’m pleased to see that the RSES has recently submitted its consultation response, and we fully support its statement that ‘the draft legislation has the potential to be transformational in requiring security-related threats to be designed out so far as is reasonably practicable’. We are excited that this legislation might finally put security on a par with safety; an idea that is fundamental to our approach and that we have been championing for a number of years.”
John Taylor, Head of Security.