G'Day, Could I have your opinions on the following scenario: Landlord owns an industrial estate and lets yards & units out to various tenants. Who is responsible for gritting / ensuring the safety of pedestrian walkways and traffic routes? (with regards to snow / ice) To muddy the waters, what about shared walkways / routes. Regards, Ian

In my view irrespective of duties or otherwise what is happening these days is that most employers/landlords are taking the chance that they will not be enforced/prosecuted so they are not gritting and if a claim comes in they will look at it, the claim [not the gritting!] then and only then there are cases of companies doing their best only to lose court cases where others who never grit etc never get caught other than via a civil claim which does not go on their record is is usually cheap to pay [if they ever pay!] - good companies just cannot win just some thoughts

Wasn't sure if it (specifically landlords duties) had been done to death or not - a quick search didn't find anything. We are occupying one of the units on the industrial estate so, as employer, we are gritting the walkways around this unit and this unit only. We are not touching walkways around letted units and leaving this to the individual tenants. Not sure if this is right or not hence the original post. We understand our duties as an employer, but not so clear as a landlord. Ian

My thoughts are that unless it is explicit in the tenancy agreements that the tenant is responsible for designated external areas then you as the landlord would be responsible. I comment as someone who used to undertake risk assessments for managing agents of such sites and they were responsible for external areas unless it was explicit that they weren't.

If you can grit then grit, but it doesn't mean that an employer who hasn't gritted is negligent in anyway. A lot of local councils haven't gritted and didn't last year and people seem to get about without much injury but once they arrive at work appear to fall over. We had kept all paths clear (about a mile and a half in total, spending over £15.000 so far on grit. Friday it snowed heavily, no staff on site to enable gritting, Monday after the freezing temperatures we have been unable to do anything to clear the pathways although the people responsible have been clearing areas to allow people to walk around site. Just because there is snow and ice on the floor don't assume that the employer doesn't care, you have to have the labour force to enable the clearing of areas. Take extra care if you can see that the area hasn't ben cleared. 'Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to witness an accident and help pursue a claim against this very well known supermarket company.' for me is a poor statement to make but then again I suppose that's the motivator for H&S.

My wife works in the operating theatres at a large hospital an would like to disagree, hospitals are under alot of stress with record numbers of fractures and fall related injuries....

I stand corrected, but I did mean in relation to the number of people still walking, driving around etc. Then again I sat in a hospital last week when I heard two people who said I don't bother with a Dr. I always just come here. So maybe some of them don't need to be there.