Invacuation means moving people away from danger to a place inside the premises where there is less risk, including bringing people in from outside. Local authority emergency plans often call it shelter. It is the right response when the danger is outside or nearby.

What is the difference between invacuation and lockdown?

Invacuation is about moving people to safer places inside. Lockdown is about securing the building so nobody can get in or out. They are often used together: bring everyone in, then lock down.

Is a terrorist evacuation the same as a fire evacuation?

No. The statutory guidance says a hostile-threat evacuation should use a different alert from the fire alarm, may use different routes, and should favour dispersal over gathering at a predictable assembly point, which could itself be a target.

Invacuation, lockdown, evacuation, communication

Martyn's Law names four procedures. All of them come down to two things: get people away from the danger, wherever it is, and tell them what to do. This is what each one means in a school.

Evacuation: get out

Moving people out of the building, or part of it, when the danger is inside.

Every school drills this for fire. The guidance is clear that a terrorist evacuation is not the same thing, for three reasons:

It needs its own alert. People respond to a fire alarm by filing out calmly to a known point. That is the wrong response here.
It may use different routes, away from where the threat is.
It should prefer dispersal over gathering. A fire assembly point in full view of the road is exactly where an attacker would expect a crowd.

For a school, dispersal has to be balanced against the need to account for every child. That usually means an assembly location that is not predictable from the road, with an off-site alternative. The guidance also notes that fire can be used as a weapon, so a fire alarm should not be assumed to be only a fire.

Invacuation: get in

Moving people to a safer place inside the premises, including bringing them in from the playground or the gate. Local authority emergency plans often call this "shelter".

It is the right response when the danger is outside or nearby: an incident on the road, police activity in the area, a report from a neighbouring school. The plan needs three things: named safer areas (away from windows and external doors, with room for a class), who decides, and what triggers it.

Lockdown: keep them out

Securing the building so nobody can enter or leave: locking doors, closing shutters, using whatever barriers exist.

Most schools already have a lockdown procedure from safeguarding. The guidance adds some practical questions:

Which doors can actually be locked from inside?
Which doors release automatically on the fire alarm?
Would a partial lockdown work better than a full one? (Locking the doors near the threat while keeping a safe exit open.)
Who holds the keys?

Lockdown often follows invacuation. An evacuation may follow lockdown once it is safe.

Communication: tell them

Alerting everyone to danger and telling them what to do, quickly, where it is safe to do so. In a school that means:

A signal that is clearly different from the fire alarm.
Agreed words for what it means.
A way to reach the playground and the far end of the site.
A separate message for staff, who need to know their role, not just the instruction.
"Get out" must sound different from "get in and lock down".
Somebody to call 999, who knows what to say: where, what, and which entrance.

Choosing between them

The guidance is emphatic that a plan for every type of attack slows people down. Its example is a venue that wrote several evacuation procedures and found staff froze choosing between them.

The rule it prefers is simple. If the threat is inside, get out. If the threat is outside or nearby, get in and lock down. Act fast, and adapt as the situation and the police's advice develop.

Do this next

Check which of the four your school has, which it doesn't, and whether the ones you have would actually work. Ten minutes, free, no account.

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