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,

Edinburgh.