A range of Department for Education Guidance documents are available below to assist you in completing your own policies and procedures for managing critical incidents.

Please ensure you read the updated non-statutory guidance from the DfE called Protective security and preparedness for education settings. This article link will provide you with a list of actions for schools to carry out.

Be prepared for Martyn’s Law implementation by reading the following articles from Gov.UK, named How Martyn’s Law will affect education settings and How education settings should prepare for and respond to terrorism and other major incidents .

An SCC LA Maintained Schools’ ‘Critical Incident – policy and procedure guidance’ document has now been completed. Schools will be able to use this document to form their own procedures, processes and policy. The document is entirely sourced from Government, HSE, and National Counter-Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) guidance. The Martyn’s Law documents (above) will also help. Further advice can be sought from your SHaW Advisor.

It is essential that you read and note the contents of, the updated September 2025 letter from the Head of Organisational Support, Emma Laflin. This includes new contact details for the Education Officer team, which is crucial to the process of reporting incidents.

Please read the main document entitled ‘DfE Guidance – School and College Security, November 2019’ (updated 2024) first, and then use the Word templates as required.

This guidance and associated templates can be used in conjunction with the SCC and Suffolk Constabulary self-assessment already published.

There are numerous types of incident which could be deemed ‘critical’.  For clarification, a critical incident is any event that the head teacher feels the safety of pupils or staff is compromised. These events may include the following, but the list is not exhaustive:

• The death of a member of the school community through sudden death, accident, terminal illness or suicide
• A serious incident / accident / unwanted event involving pupils or staff on or off the school premises
• An accident / tragedy in the wider community which may or may not affect the school directly but is in the direct vicinity of the school
• A physical attack on staff member(s) or student(s) or intrusion into the school
• Bomb threats
• Serious damage to the school building through fire, flood, vandalism etc
• The disappearance of a member of the school community
• One where you are required to call the police
• The need to close the whole, or part of the school.

Please find below a number of DfE links for practical advice regarding managing school security, policies and plans and relevant legislation. All of these documents can assist you to manage local policies and procedures.

• Self-assessment emergency incident planning checklist

• Risk assessment template

• Business continuity plan template and checklist

• Evacuation template

• Bomb alert and threat template

• Shelter (invacuation) template

• Lockdown template

• Post incident support checklist

• Debrief and lessons learned checklist

• Terrorist incident response template

• Further resources: security advice and guidance

• Potential security threats and preventative measures

• Site security guidance

The Suffolk County Council and Suffolk Constabulary Joint Working ‘School Site Security Guidance and Self-Assessment‘ will assist you in assessing your site’s physical security.

There is also a letter from the Chief Constable and the Executive Director of Fire and Public Protection. This is applicable to all school environments.

Any concerns regarding the reporting of critical incidents can be directed to [email protected] and [email protected]