It is tempting to consider slipping on food dropped on to dining room floors as a normal occupational hazard for teachers. But no health and safety risk is acceptable, and depending on the circumstances both teachers and employers could be guilty of negligence.
In Porter v Strathclyde Regional Council (1991) a nursery assistant slipped on a piece of food which had been left on the floor after the school dinner was over.
She claimed damages on the grounds that her employers had failed to ensure that there was a satisfactory system for cleaning food from floors and that they had failed to provide adequate supervision with a view to preventing food being dropped on to floors.The court held that the risk of someone slipping on a piece of discarded food was a reasonably foreseeable danger.
Consequently, if the employers had operated a system that was designed to reduce or even preclude that danger, then it would be most unlikely that such an accident would occur. They were, therefore, negligent.
However, the employee also had a responsibility for her own safety and in the circumstances she had failed to take reasonable care of herself and was therefore liable for 50 per cent contributory negligence.
The moral of this is that, first, schools should not only have health and safety policies but should regularly review and update them, and monitor their implementation. Second, all employees should be aware that they have a statutory obligation under health and safety legislation to have due regard for their own safety.
When employees have fallen over in schools with existing reasonable policies and where there had been a collective endeavour to implement them, courts have ruled that there was no negligence attached. In such cases slipping over is purely accidental.
Chris Lowe is honorary legal consultant to the Secondary Heads Association.
