Lockdown and alerting
for schools and venues
Every adult on site told in seconds, with the action attached — and the doors, cameras and records behind it. Specified, installed and certified by an electrical contractor.
Verkada Gold Partner through SEG Core · NICEIC approved through The Specialist Electrical Group · St Albans
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We walk the site and tell you what would actually help. No obligation, no quotation on the day.
The Act asks for procedures. Your week asks for everything else
Martyn’s Law section 5 asks every in-scope premises for four procedures — evacuation, invacuation, lockdown and communication. Schedule 1 puts every school in the standard tier whatever its size, so for a school those procedures are the whole duty. Section 6 measures apply to enhanced-tier premises only, and almost no school is one. We sell the answer to both halves, and we are straight about which is which.
Cosafe
Software. Any member of staff raises the alarm from where they are, every adult is told in seconds with the action for their role, leadership sees the response live, and the log writes itself. This is the half that answers the duty you actually have.
The platformSection 6, and the rest of the yearVerkada
Doors that hold from a phone, cameras you can search rather than scrub, vape sensors where a camera must never go, and a visitor desk that does the safeguarding work. Sold through SEG Core, a Verkada Gold Partner.
The systemsMost schools need the first and want some of the second. What the four procedures actually ask →
A lockdown on a large site is a communications problem
The person who notices is rarely the person who decides, and on a 2,500-pupil site they are nowhere near each other. Every step in a written plan that depends on somebody physically getting somewhere is a step that costs you the time you have not got.
- Anyone can raise it. From where they are standing, without reaching the office first — which matters most when the office is the part of the site that is affected.
- The instruction travels with the alarm. Role-based actions arrive with the alert, so staff do the right thing rather than the confident thing.
- Leadership sees the response. Live, by area, so the question becomes ‘which rooms have not answered’ rather than ‘did it send’.
- It is not a tannoy, and should not be. Cosafe alerts the adults. Where a spoken instruction in every room is part of your plan, that is a voice alarm system and we install those too.
One platform, six families, one login
Every Verkada device runs in the same console. A door event arrives with the footage of it, a vape alert names the toilet block, and one browser login covers every site you have.
Cameras
Recording on the camera, managed in the browser. No NVR in a cupboard to fail, be stolen or be forgotten.
- Onboard storage on every camera, with 30 days of cloud backup included per camera licence
- Dome, bullet, mini, fisheye, multisensor, PTZ and LTE remote models
- People, vehicle, motion and licence-plate search from one console
Access control
Doors and cameras on the same platform, and the ability to lock a site down from a phone.
- AC12, AC43 and AC62 controllers — one, four or sixteen doors
- Cards, fobs, PIN, mobile credentials and Apple Wallet
- Emergency Scenarios: Hold, Secure, Lockdown, Evacuate, Shelter
Video intercom
The front gate answered from wherever the person answering actually is.
- TD33, TD53 and TD63 models with a reader built in
- Answered on a desk station, a phone, a browser or through Microsoft Teams
- Call routing with failover, schedules and automatic messages
Guest and visitor management
Knowing who is in the building — which is a safeguarding answer and a fire roll-call answer at once.
- Sign-in on an iPad with photo, badge printing and host notification
- Screening questions and watch lists before a visitor is admitted
- A live list of who is on site, exportable at the assembly point
Environmental sensors
The places a camera must never go — toilets, changing rooms, boarding corridors.
- SV21, SV23 and SV25 — vape index, air quality, noise, occupancy, temperature
- No camera, no microphone recording, no images
- Alerts to named staff when the vape index rises
Alarms
Intruder detection where an activation arrives with the footage that caused it.
- BP41 panel with 32 wired inputs and BK11 or BK21 keypads
- Professional monitoring in the UK and Ireland, NSI Gold certified
- Video-verified response and talk-down before any dispatch
Command
One login across every device and every site, with roles that actually restrict what people can see.
- Every camera, door, sensor, intercom and alarm in one browser
- SSO with Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace; SCIM provisioning
- Role-based permissions per site, per device, per user group
The reasons to buy are the incidents you already have
Nobody in a school is lying awake about terrorism. They are thinking about the man at the gate at three o’clock, the Year 9s in the far toilets, the pupil who has walked out, and who has a key to the sports hall on a Saturday.
- An intruder at the gate. An intercom answered from wherever the office staff actually are, and a door that can be held closed from a phone.
- Vaping in the toilets. A sensor where a camera must never go, alerting the pastoral team by name.
- A pupil who has left site. Footage searchable by description in seconds rather than scrubbed through for an hour.
- Lettings and half term. Who came in, which door, and at what time — without asking the caretaker to remember.
Six situations, and the kit that answers each one
None of these are terrorism. They are the things that actually fill a school office’s week and a duty manager’s evening — and they are what the system earns its keep on between now and the day Martyn’s Law commences.
Lockdown
Doors held closed from a phone or the office, room by room or the whole block, without anyone walking a corridor to turn a key.
Vaping in the toilets
A sensor where a camera must never go. It reads the air and names the block; it does not photograph anybody.
The man at the gate
Sign-in, a printed badge and a photograph on the pass, so a visitor is visible to every member of staff who passes them.
A pupil off site
Footage searchable by what somebody was wearing, so a search takes minutes rather than an afternoon of scrubbing.
Half term and lettings
Who came in, which door, at what time — and a door that stops working the moment a hirer’s booking ends.
Keys nobody can account for
A leaver is switched off in one click across every door and every site, instead of a lock change and a box of unreturned fobs.
The four things that win the argument on site
Every capability below is taken from Verkada’s own current documentation, and the sources are listed at the foot of the systems pages.
Lock down doors in seconds
Emergency Scenarios follow the Standard Response Protocol — Hold, Secure, Lockdown, Evacuate, Shelter. You define which doors lock, which unlock and who is notified. Triggered from Command, the Command mobile app, the Verkada Pass app, a wired button or the API. Verkada states these take effect within seconds when triggered from a wired button or Pass.
Alert named people instantly
Alerts reach chosen individuals or groups by push, SMS, email or a messaging platform. This is targeted notification to the people running the response.
Verify what is actually happening
Door events, alarm activations and sensor readings arrive with the footage attached, so the person deciding what to do is looking at the incident rather than describing it.
Speak to a location remotely
The BZ11 talk-down speaker carries live speech from Command or the mobile app, or plays a pre-recorded or text-to-speech message automatically when an alarm triggers.
Three things you will be told that are not true
A great deal of what is being sold on Martyn’s Law right now is wrong, out of date, or written to frighten a school business manager into a purchase order. Check any quotation you receive — ours included — against these.
“Martyn’s Law means you need CCTV”
It does not. The standard-tier duty is about procedures, and the Home Office says plainly that there is no requirement to put physical measures in place. The honest answer.
“Your school might be enhanced tier”
It will not be. Childcare, early years, primary, secondary and further education are standard duty premises regardless of numbers — that is on the face of Schedule 1. Why.
“The deadline is coming”
The duties have not commenced. The SIA expects spring 2027 and has not named a date. What is actually in force.
What is true
The reasons to invest are the incidents you already have — the intruder at the gate, the vaping, the missing pupil, the break-in over half term. Those are honest reasons, and they do not need a piece of legislation to justify them.
Standard tier, and what it really asks of you
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025. The duties have not commenced and the SIA expects spring 2027. Schools are standard tier regardless of size, and the standard-tier duty is about procedures rather than equipment.
A premises comes into scope where a Schedule 1 use applies and 200 or more people may reasonably be expected at the same time. Below 200 there is no duty at all. From 200 to 799 the premises is standard tier, which asks for procedures. At 800 or more it is enhanced tier, which adds measures, a document and a designated senior individual. Childcare, early years, primary, secondary and further-education premises are standard tier regardless of their numbers, because Schedule 1 of the Act puts them there. Higher education has no such carve-out.
UK organisations already running it
These are Verkada’s own published customer stories, and the figures in them are the customers’ claims rather than ours. We link them so you can read the source.
Stratford School Academy
Cameras, environmental sensors, access control, intercom and Workplace across the school. The school reports a 67% decrease in vape events and 805 investigation hours saved over three years.
Verkada’s write-up →Mayfield School
A through-school deployment covering site security and safeguarding.
Verkada’s write-up →Kedleston Group
A multi-site special-education estate run from one platform.
Verkada’s write-up →GAIL’s Bakery
A multi-site retail and hospitality estate, cited by Verkada as covering security and operations.
Verkada’s write-up →
The camera is the easy part
Most of what goes wrong on a security install is electrical. The cable route, the containment, the fire-stopping where it passes a compartment wall, the spare way in the board, the certificate at the end. We do that work as our day job and have done since 2018.
- One trade, one certificate. NICEIC-approved electrical contracting through The Specialist Electrical Group, so the containment and the power are certified rather than improvised.
- We survey before we quote. A free site visit, a drawing and a device schedule — not a price list emailed against a floor plan.
- DBS-checked engineers for school work. And work planned around your day, which usually means half term rather than a Tuesday morning.
- You own the outcome, not a contract. Licences are per device with unlimited users. If you leave us, the system is still yours.
An electrical contractor that happens to do security
SEGsafe is part of The Specialist Electrical Group. The people who install your cameras are the people who install the containment, pull the cable, terminate the power and certify the work — which is why a door interlock with the fire alarm is a conversation rather than a problem.
Hertfordshire, London and the South East, and further afield for multi-site organisations. Our general Verkada site is verkadacctv.co.uk.
Straight answers
Is Martyn’s Law in force yet?
Does Martyn’s Law require CCTV?
Our school has 1,400 pupils. Are we enhanced tier?
So why would a school buy anything?
Where does our footage live?
Start with a survey, not a quotation.
We walk the site, look at what you already have, and tell you what would genuinely help — including where the answer is that you do not need anything.
Book a free site survey Call 01727 822 833Tell us about the site
Send us a few details and an engineer — not a call centre — will come back to you within one working day.
This is not a monitoring centre
If you are dealing with an incident now, call 999. This line is monitored during office hours.