Town council considering plans to boost security at big events in Biggleswade
Town council officers in Biggleswade are considering a range of measures to protect public safety in the town at large events, even the potential for terrorist-related activity, a meeting heard.
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, known as Martyn’s Law, aims to improve security and organisational readiness across the UK. It requires those responsible for certain events to consider how they would respond to a terrorist attack.
Addressing wider security issues locally at Biggleswade Town Council’s annual assembly, town clerk Peter Tarrant acknowledged a recent change in the law, saying: “Officers are due to do some academic exercises connected to how we can keep people safe for future events.
“We’re then going to be trialling events to see how we can make that happen, conscious of terrorism-related activity and the like. A paper will come to council during the next few months, which will try to articulate the detailed plans we’ll have drawn up.
“This may also require extra security in place to protect people at such events. So if you can bear with us for now, as that detail will come to council and then town councillors will make a determination associated with it. This is the law and we’re obliged to respond to the law.
“That isn’t particular to certain aspects of the community. Effectively the law has changed where we need to be reflective in ensuring the safety of people who attend events.
“We also have to be thoughtful of the most extreme situation of terrorist-related activity in the main. We’re considerate of that legislation and we’re trying to think about the events being held in the coming year and how we can protect people and keep them safe.
“That’s for the whole range of events which might happen in the town centre,” he explained. “We need to trial this and put together a plan around how we’ll deploy that, and think about how we’ll best achieve it.
“It’s a difficult situation because you can take it to extremes. Logic would suggest certain activity which happens in London, for instance connected to terrorism, mightn’t happen here.
“But it might. So we need to be thoughtful about that and put plans in place which protect people as best we can, while recognising the risks which are local to us.
“We’ll be discussing this with a range of different stakeholders in the community from all kinds of interest. The law has only just come through, so we need to get the plans ready first and we need to talk to our members.”
Town councillor Jonathan Woodhead added: “The town clerk is referring to Martyn’s Law, which came in following the 2017 Manchester Arena terrorist attack.
“There’s a particular onus around public safety that we require for wider public events attracting a certain number of public, which could include physical things such as bollards or more subtle security measures.
“It’s essentially larger scale public events and things such as child safety and lost children all fit within the Martyn’s Law category.”