We hire the hall out — who is responsible, us or the hirer?
In short
Hiring your hall out to other groups almost never moves the legal responsibility away from whoever is actually in control of the premises day to day. That's usually you, the committee, whatever your booking diary looks like — and it's true even if someone else, such as a parish council or a diocese, holds the premises licence.
Key points
Responsibility under the Act follows control of the premises, not who holds the lease, the licence or the freehold.
An ordinary hire — a toddler group on Tuesdays, a wedding on Saturday — doesn't transfer responsibility to the hirer; you remain responsible throughout.
There's one exception: where the hire is itself a large, ticketed event that counts separately under the Act, the hirer becomes responsible for that event, while you stay responsible for the premises the rest of the time.
You can, and the guidance suggests you should, put the public protection requirements into your hire agreement — but that's good practice, not what moves the legal duty.
A licence held by somebody else — a brewery, a council, a trust — does not make them the responsible person if you're the one in control.
Control, not paperwork, decides who's responsible
The Act's test for who's responsible is who has control of the premises for their relevant use — in practice, who has physical possession at the relevant time and the right to decide who may or may not remain on site. The statutory guidance is explicit that this is about control, not about who holds a document: a person "will ordinarily have physical possession of the premises at the relevant time, with the right and the ability to make decisions regarding their management and use". A hall committee that unlocks the building, runs the booking diary and can refuse entry is in control, whatever the paperwork says about ownership.
This matters because the guidance's own example of a leased pub was corrected, in August 2026, to say exactly this: even though the brewery or pub company holds the premises licence, it's the tenant who's in control of the pub for its relevant use day to day, so the tenant is the responsible person, not the brewery. The same logic reaches a village hall whose premises licence happens to sit with a parish council or a diocese — if your committee is the one actually running the building, the duty is yours, not theirs.
Hiring the hall out doesn't move the duty — with one exception
The guidance states the general rule directly: "when qualifying premises host different organisations and activities, such as when they are hired out, the responsible person remains the same." A toddler group on Tuesday mornings, a wedding on Saturday afternoon and a quiz night on Friday evening don't make four responsible persons out of one hall — you remain responsible throughout, for the premises as a whole.
The one exception is a hire that is, in its own right, a large enough ticketed event to count separately under the Act. The guidance's own example is a private company that hires a standard-tier village hall for a one-off fundraiser expecting 800 or more people with tickets: the company becomes responsible for that event, while the hall's committee "remains the responsible person for the premises outside of the event". Your own duties don't disappear — they sit alongside the hirer's, for the event's duration.
Put it in the hire agreement, but don't rely on that alone
Because responsibility doesn't shift just by handing someone the keys for an evening, the sensible step is to set out what you expect of hirers in your hire agreement or booking terms — what to do in an evacuation, who to call, how the building locks up. The guidance describes a school governing body doing exactly this when hiring its hall to an events organisation. That's useful evidence of forethought, but it's a safeguard, not what decides who the law holds responsible.
Needs a closer look
Working out who is genuinely "in control" is straightforward for most halls, but gets harder where control is shared — a trust that manages bookings while a separate committee runs the building day to day, for example, or premises inside a larger site someone else runs. Where it isn't obvious who's in control, this needs a closer look. Use the scope checker.
Common questions
- A parish council owns our hall freehold but our committee runs it — who's responsible?
Almost certainly your committee, because responsibility follows control of the premises, not ownership of the freehold.
- Do we need a written agreement with every hirer?
There's no statutory requirement for a particular form of agreement, but recording what hirers are expected to do, and briefing regular hirers on your procedures, is sensible practice, and it's the kind of evidence the guidance describes being used in exactly this situation.
- What if the hirer's event is big enough to need its own notification to the SIA?
Then that's the hirer's job for their event, not yours — you keep notifying and maintaining procedures for the premises as normal, alongside whatever the hirer has to do for their event. Check your scope if you're unsure who that falls to.
Check your building, free
Answer a few questions about who uses your building and how many people could be there at once. We’ll tell you plainly whether Martyn’s Law applies, and why.
Sources
Last reviewed 2 November 2026, against the statutory guidance of 15 April 2026 (corrected 6 August 2026).