Failure to Remove Ice and Snow from Road

Goodes v East Sussex County Council (H of L WLR 16 June)

A highway authority has an absolute duty under s41(1) of the Highways Act 1980 to keep the fabric of the highway in a good state of repair so as to render it safe for ordinary traffic at all seasons of the year, but that does not include a duty to prevent or remove the formation or accumulation of ice and snow on the road. The House of Lords unanimously allowed an appeal against the majority decision of the Court of Appeal which had reversed the decision of the trial judge who had dismissed the claimant’s action for personal injuries caused by the council’s alleged breach of statutory duty. The claimant’s car had skidded on a patch of black ice early one November morning as a result of which he suffered dreadful injuries and now was almost entirely paralysed. Although the council denied that it had a statutory duty to keep the roads free of ice, it did in fact make considerable efforts to do so. It received regular early weather forecasts in the light of which it decided whether and when to send out the council’s fleet of gritting lorries, seeking to complete the salting before the morning rush hour started at 7.30am. On the day in question, lorries had been despatched at 5.30am but unfortunately had not yet reached the scene of the accident. It was an attractive argument to say that the law should move with the times and that public expectations had changed from what might have been a sufficient maintenance in Victorian times, but that argument could not be accepted. The duty in question was an absolute one and in that context there seemed to be an important difference between a duty to maintain the fabric of the road in good repair and a duty to prevent or remove the formation or accumulation of ice and snow. There was obviously a case for saying that a person who suffered a catastrophic accident as a result of the presence of ice, which in modern conditions the highway authority could reasonably have removed, should have a remedy. Whether or not the facts of the present case fell within that description, the House was quite satisfied that Parliament had not yet provided such a remedy.