About The Venue Record

Most premises with safety obligations are small. Village halls, churches, community centres, sports clubs, function rooms, small hotels and offices. Almost none employ anyone whose job includes safety compliance, so the duty sits with a trustee, a warden, a parish clerk or a manager who has plenty else to do. The official guidance is well written, but it is long and written for every kind of premises at once.

What The Venue Record does

Safety documents with version history

Procedures, risk assessments, policies and certificates held per site, with the current version clearly marked and every version it replaced kept with the date it changed and who changed it.

Sign-off by the people who work there

One link per person, read on a phone, confirmed in a tap. No accounts and no passwords, so volunteers, casual staff and contractors actually complete it. The register records who signed and when.

Drill and check logs with approval

Fire drills, walkthroughs and routine tests logged as they happen, with who took part and what went wrong. A named person at that site reviews and approves each entry before it closes, so the person who ran the check is not the only person who signed it off.

Reminders before checks fall due

Weekly, monthly and annual checks scheduled once, then prompted before the date. Reminders go to whoever carries out the check, not only to the account holder.

Regulation alerts

When requirements change, you are told what changed, what it means for a premises like yours, and which of your documents are affected. Anyone who signed the old wording is asked to sign again.

Evidence on demand

A single PDF with your own branding: current documents, the sign-off register, drill and check logs with dates, the named responsible person and the version history. For an inspector, an insurer, a licensing officer or your own committee.

Free guides and tools

Plain-English guidance on Martyn's Law and fire safety records, plus a free scope check and capacity calculator. These are open to anyone, with no sign-up, and they stay that way.

What makes The Venue Record different

It is a record, not a certificate

The Venue Record keeps a dated record of what a venue has done, who confirmed it and when. It does not issue certificates or assess compliance; that stays with the responsible person and the regulator.

Priced per venue, not per person

Safety training is commonly sold per head, which becomes expensive for a hall with fourteen volunteers. Charging per venue means unlimited staff, volunteers, contractors and hirers can be briefed and signed off at no extra cost.

Built for volunteers, not safety professionals

Sign-off needs no account and no password. Setup is a set of questions about the building rather than a blank template. The guides assume no prior knowledge of the legislation.

Obligation-agnostic

Martyn's Law, fire safety, and the other checks a premises has to keep all work the same way: decide it, write it down, tell the people, test it, evidence the dates. One record rather than one product per regulation.

The guidance is free and stays free

Understanding what your premises has to keep costs nothing. The paid product is the system that holds the records afterwards.

Who uses The Venue Record

• Village and community halls run by volunteer trustee boards
• Churches, chapels and other places of worship
• Schools, nurseries and academy trusts
• Sports clubs, social clubs and leisure centres
• Pubs, restaurants, hotels and function rooms
• Offices, warehouses and industrial sites with no safety officer
• Parish and town councils, dioceses and trusts responsible for several buildings

How The Venue Record works

Setup takes about forty minutes per site. You photograph the fire evacuation notice already on your wall, answer around twelve questions about the building, review what has been drafted in your building's own words, then send one link to each person who needs to know it.

After that it runs on prompts: reminders before checks are due, a nudge when a drill has not been logged, and an alert when guidance changes. Organisations with more than one building get a portfolio view showing which sites are current and which are behind, with a named local person for each.

Support is by email at hello@venuerecord.co.uk. Everything runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install.

Who is behind The Venue Record

The Venue Record is independently owned and self-funded, built and run from Cambridge. It is not owned by, funded by or commercially tied to any insurer, security provider, training company or trade body, which means the guidance on this site has no product being sold behind it other than the record system itself.

The team will be named publicly when the product opens to its first sites. Until then, anything on the site that needs a human answer reaches one at hello@venuerecord.co.uk.

Key facts

Accuracy and corrections

Every guide carries the date it was last reviewed. Where the position is uncertain or contested, we say so rather than picking the more confident-sounding answer, and where common practice differs from legal requirement we distinguish between the two. If you spot something wrong, email it and it will be corrected.

Nothing on this site is legal advice. For Martyn's Law the Home Office section 27 statutory guidance and the SIA are the authorities. For fire safety your own fire risk assessment and your local fire and rescue authority take precedence over anything written here.

Linking to the guides and tools

Parish and town councils, rural community councils, dioceses, county associations and community organisations are welcome to link to anything here from their own websites and member resources. If a short description or a specific landing page would help your members, get in touch and we will put one together.

Frequently asked questions