If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you or someone you know has slipped over in a supermarket. I’m sorry if this is the case, but I’d encourage you to read on because I need to tell you something very important that could be the making or breaking of your claim for compensation.
In these sorts of cases, evidence can be everything. By law, a supermarket is liable to compensate someone who has slipped and fallen in their premises if they have breached the Occupiers Liability Act. This important piece of legislation stipulates that the occupier of a premises has an important duty to make their premises as safe as they reasonably can.
To prevent a slipping hazard as reasonably as possible, the supermarket should have a system or inspection and maintenance to look out for and clear away any hazards on the floor or place wet floor signs or cordons in the area until a hazard can be cleared away. What could be classed as reasonable is open to interpretation – if it’s a really busy Saturday afternoon, then a half hourly or hourly inspection may be classed as reasonable. In the early hours of the morning where there are far less customers, it may be less.
Most supermarkets nowadays probably have a system of inspection and maintenance. If they can prove they have a good enough one, they can easily defend your claim. That is just the way the law works!
At the start of this article I said to you that I had some very important advice. Well, here it is: most supermarkets have CCTV, and most of them only keep the footage for around two to three weeks. If they say they have a good enough system and have kept up with it, we have only one thing to say – the camera never lies! The footage could show whether they have maintained a good system, and could even indicate how long the spillage has been there for. Granted, it could very well make for a perfect defence for the supermarket as it may show that they genuinely have kept up with a system. But if they haven’t, the CCTV footage could prove this.
To secure the footage, there are a couple of steps you can take. For one, I hope you reported the accident in store and an Accident Report Form was completed. If not, I’d suggest reporting it as soon as possible. Call and email both the store and a head office address to ask for the footage to be retained as evidence. The purpose of the email is that you have some form of evidence that a reasonable request to retain the footage was made. Next is to instruct us to deal with your claim. We have ways and means of securing CCTV footage and we need to act fast to safeguard it because it will normally be deleted in a matter of less than a few weeks!
Call our free claims helpline on 0800 634 75 75.
