MANY years ago, householders and particularly shopkeepers took pride in clearing snow and ice from the area immediately in front of their premises.
Later, this came to be regarded as a service to which they were entitled as a result of making payments to the local authority. The law kept pace by imposing a duty upon councils to do so together with liability for any failure to do so.
In recent years, however, local authorities, or more particularly their insurers, came to regard this as an unreasonable financial burden. They duly made representations to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords which, in what looked uncomfortably like judicial legislation, expressly reflected those concerns in a series of judgments.
The result in law is that while councils continue to grit at least the most vital roads. Their liability for any failure to do so is now considerably restricted and it might be as well for the public to now recognise that fact and take extra care in icy conditions.
Perhaps the time has come therefore, in this era of austerity, for all of us to revert to the former way of working so that in future cold snaps we grit our own immediate areas and assist our disadvantaged neighbours.
Richard N M Anderson,
Advocate,
Faculty of Advocates,
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel