For the sake of this post, I am an employer of several hundred people in a urban office environment. An unexpected situation occurs which prevents the vast majority of my staff getting home after a day at work. This might be heavy snow, high winds leading to power outages and fallen trees, floods or perhaps a terrorist type incident resulting in the termination of public transport - You get the idea. Have I a legal duty of care towards my staff and even perhaps visitors who cannot get home, and if so, what should I be considering during any RA of this type of situation? I must stress, I am only interested in what I MUST do(by law), not what I might do if I was a nice cuddly & generous employer, which I am not!!

You need do nothing. Once they have finished work / going home they are obviously no longer at work. No specific further duty of care.

For normal weather related travel disruption this should be dealt with HR departments to hand out policies etc. For more severe forms of disruption that may affect business continuity then most large companies have strategy's and policies already in place. It's another hat I have to wear in my current situation and is not a H&S role as such.

Thats the best thing for Bradford ..... shut it down

JJ that's why I like this forum so much - such professional postings!

Chill out, just a gentle jest

Ray you introduce an interesting point that is often overlooked. There is a statutory legal duty, a common law duty and a duty of care. All these are enshrined in British law. The duty of care is from statutory law mainly. The thing about snow and other difficult transport issues is outside the legal system in my opinion. Good employers will take an interest in how thier employees can get to work or home but are unable to do that much about it. Please can we be sure about exactly what responsibility is laid down to employers in problamatic conditions affecting the general population as opposed to those in a work environment.

For the most part I would suggest that an employer generally has few if any duties in MOST cases for the situations described at the top of the thread, for ensuring that a person gets home. In saying that there may be a contractual duty such as where an employer provides transport to get workers to and from work, which is a relatively common practice in some industries such as poultry production. I am also not entirely convinced with the statement “.. an employer only has a duty for employees whilst they are on the premises or engaged in a work activity”. While this may be true in many/most cases, the Produce Connection case does seem to suggest that it isn’t quite so clear cut. Likewise I think Andybz makes an interesting point about whether an employer might be found liable (criminal or civil) in the event that they had exerted undue pressure upon an employee to come into work, perhaps against the ‘advice’ of the Police, local agencies etc and the employee subsequently suffered loss or injury as a result. I don’t have the answer nor am I aware of any current case law that might be applicable. However, such is the idiosyncratic nature of our legal system that I wouldn’t be as bold as to suggest that there DEFINITELY isn’t ANY duty.

I would say it is not the employers responsibility to ensure staff get home safely. However, they should not knowingly put their staff at risk. If it it's been snowing heavily since 8 in the morning, it hasn't stopped and forecast predicts it will continue and you don't allow staff the opportunity to leave early in order to get home safely you may be exposed. In Scotland, when it is snowing heavily we are normally given the opportunity to leave the workplace early to allow us to attempt to get home safely and while its still light (normally making the hours up at some point later in the month). There also has to be some common sense and accountability coming into the travel to work thing, if the roads are clearly unsafe, blocked or whichever it is unfair to expect employees to come in, however, employees should make an effort, if safe to do so to make their way in to work. In Scotland we quite often have people coming in late due to waiting for a snowplough or for daylight and the road conditions to improve, that is perfectly acceptable. Its wide open to discussion.....

The responsibility for getting to and from their place of work is generally with the employee. Employees choose where to live and in essence choose to take employment when offered. Thus they accept the consequences of those choices. In some cases this may be complicated by cases such as on call/standby, multiple work places, work and/or start from home etc. However, generally the employer can have no duty in that respect. The Produce Connection case was one of extreme circumstances where an employee had been allowed to work an average of 17 hours per day for the previous 7-10 days. I can see no reason why that judgement would impact on the scenario described here. The judgement was about regular and general work activity and patterns where extreme fatigue was foreseeable. I suggest that employers may well be tempted into all sorts of issues if they became actively involved in the decision on whether it is safe for their employees to travel to/from work during periods of inclement weather. It is also interesting to note that employers are not required to pay employees simply because they were unable to travel to/from work during inclement weather or indeed during other failures of transportation systems. However, all that said the better employers recognise that their employees are their assets and have systems to protect or at least minimise the risks to those assets. This is especially so with regard to employees who are critical to the business. That is where the arrangements mentioned by others are founded; not in any H&S duty. Of course any H&S implications of those arrangements would need to be considered. For example making sure the flexible working didn’t contravene the WTD. P48

Back in 2007 the area I was working in was badly affected by the July floods, and on that fateful Friday it was almost impossible to get anywhere. Many employers let their employees sleep on the floor or anything more comfortable that was to hand. It could be argued that whilst the employees / visitors were still on the premises there was a duty of care, and steps might be taken to make them more comfortable, but it was an emergency situation and they did at least give their people a roof over their heads. In the public interest to prosecute if somehow there was a breach of law? I doubt it. However, could the same have been said if they had kicked them out and exposed them to serious and unpredictable risk of trying to get through floods at night?

Ray, a good second summary and an opinion that I share. It would have to be something exceptional or an exceptionally stupid act/omission that would result in a successfull claim in the circumstances outlined by the O.P. That is clear given that the reasons for acting at all would clearly be 'acts which if taken would prevent or mimimise harm to others.' I suggested earlier that I see nothing beyond the occupier of the premises sensibly having regard to any H&S implications of allowing people to use their premises for purposes other than those normally specified. Any other duty would, as you say, arise as a civil matter. p48