Who is responsible for footpath maintenance?

dulpit

Hey all,

Just wondering if people could confirm, who is responsible for the maintenance of footpaths and would be ultimately responsible if a claim went in? This would be for a footpath on a narrow street with terraced houses on both sides. Is it the home owner or the council?

Paulw

Council.

L1011

Depends on whether the development (if the house is new enough) has been taken in charge yet - but it'll be the developer or the council. Most narrow streets of terraced houses would be fairly old and definitely council though.

Peregrinus

If the road is in charge, it's the local authority that is in charge of road maintenance (footpath and carriageway).

But, unless I am misremembering, in terms of recovering damages for loss occasioned to you by a poorly maintained road, there's a distinction between malfeasance and nonfeasance. The Council does some work on the road and (say) fails to finish off the surface property, and your car is damaged - you can sue the Council. But the council simply fails to maintain the road and a pothole develops and your car is damaged - you're cactus.

Fred Swanson

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NUTLEY BOY

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Interesting point.

If a council simply fails to maintain is that not non-feasance ? If so, are councils liable for non maintenance of footpaths if the latter are part of the highway ?

Pat Mustard

Peregrinus wrote: »

But, unless I am misremembering, in terms of recovering damages for loss occasioned to you by a poorly maintained road, there's a distinction between malfeasance and nonfeasance. The Council does some work on the road and (say) fails to finish off the surface property, and your car is damaged - you can sue the Council. But the council simply fails to maintain the road and a pothole develops and your car is damaged - you're cactus.

I remember speaking to an experienced litigation engineer about one of these cases. What was interesting to me is that he was able to point to the insufficient depth of concrete in a footpath, he could say that it was incorrectly laid first day and that the cracks had brought on the (trip and fall) accident were caused by malfeasance rather than nonfeasance.

So it can be worth getting a good engineer out to take a look.

dulpit

Cheers all.

Reason I was asking was that my wife was at home yesterday and noticed 2 lads outside our house taking a bunch of photos. She approached them, one of the guys had a cast on his arm and the other was "from the council", they were checking the level of the footpath directly outside our garden. The path is broken up a bit, seemingly the dude with cast took a hopper and is (probably) on the look for a few bob...

Good to know it'd be the council on the hook for this.

Wheelnut

...unless it was something that you did that caused the path to be " broken up a bit"