Wet leaves, darker evenings, and the paths you are responsible for

Most of the attention a building gets goes on what is inside it. The fire doors, the alarm panel, the lifts, the plant room. The routes people use to reach the front door get looked at far less, and for most of the year that is fine.

Autumn is when it stops being fine. Leaves come down onto paths, steps and car parks and stay wet for days. The evenings shorten, and on Sunday 25 October the clocks go back, so the walk home from work or school happens in the dark from then until spring. A light that failed in June and nobody noticed becomes the only light on a set of steps.

The injury at the top of the table

Health and Safety Executive figures for 2024/25 show that slips, trips or falls on the same level made up 30% of the non-fatal injuries to employees reported under RIDDOR. That is the largest single kind of accident in the table, well ahead of handling, lifting or carrying at 17%, and more than three times falls from height at 8%.

Those figures only count employees, and only the injuries serious enough to be reported. They say nothing about the resident who goes over on a mossy step, or the visitor who misses a kerb in an unlit car park. Those incidents usually reach a property manager as a letter some months later, asking what inspections were done and when.

Who owes what

The duties that apply to paths, steps and external areas come from several places, and which ones apply depends on the site.

The Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 places a common duty of care on the occupier of premises towards visitors: to take such care as is reasonable in the circumstances to see that a visitor will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes they are there. The Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 covers people who are not visitors. For shared grounds around a block or an estate, the occupier in practice is usually whoever controls and maintains those areas, which is often the landlord or the management company rather than any one resident.

Where the grounds are also somebody's place of work, the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 apply as well. Regulation 8 requires suitable and sufficient lighting. Regulation 12 requires traffic routes to be kept free, so far as is reasonably practicable, of anything that may cause a person to slip, trip or fall.

In rented homes, the Housing Health and Safety Rating System lists both falls on level surfaces and lighting among its hazards, so the condition of an external path and whether it is lit can form part of a housing assessment.

None of these asks for a perfect path. They ask for reasonable care, and reasonable care is judged on what you knew, what you checked, and what you did about it.

What to walk before 25 October

This is a practical job and it fits into one visit per site.

Walk the routes people actually use, not only the ones on the plan. Desire lines across grass, the short cut to the bin store and the back gate to the car park all count.

Note where trees overhang paths, steps and ramps, since those are where the leaves will collect first and stay longest.

Look at surfaces for moss, algae, lifted slabs, loose paving and worn nosings on external steps. These are all worse when wet.

Check that handrails on external steps and ramps are present, secure and continuous.

Test the external lighting after dark, or on its timer or photocell. Record which fittings are out, and check that timers have been reset for the shorter days.

Check the drainage points on the same routes, because standing water on a path in October is standing ice in January.

Agree the autumn leaf clearance frequency with the grounds contractor now, in writing, rather than after the first complaint.

Why the record matters as much as the walk

A path that was cleared on Tuesday can be covered again by Thursday. Nobody expects the grounds to be clear every hour of the day. What a claim, an insurer or a housing officer will want is evidence of a sensible system: that the routes were inspected, that defects were raised and fixed, that the clearance frequency matched the season, and that incidents were recorded and looked at.

That evidence usually exists in pieces. The contractor's schedule is in an email, the lighting defect is a phone call to the electrician, and the resident's report of a fall is in someone's notebook.

Where SAMRISK puts it

SAMRISK holds the building and the land it sits on across thirty connected systems, twenty for the building and ten for the land.

Paths, planted areas and trees are recorded against the site in grounds and landscape, with the seasonal clearance work and its frequency. External hazards such as an unlit route or a set of worn steps sit in site risks with an owner and a review date. Lighting faults and slab repairs go through maintenance with photos and sign-off, and any fall that is reported goes into incidents against the place it happened.

The autumn walk and the clearance visits go on the compliance calendar, so the check before 25 October is a dated task with a name against it. When the letter arrives next spring, the answer to "what did you do" is already written down.

Sources: Health and Safety Executive, Non-fatal injuries at work in Great Britain, kinds of accident, 2024/25, page updated 7 January 2026; Occupiers' Liability Act 1957; Occupiers' Liability Act 1984; Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, regulations 8 and 12; Housing Health and Safety Rating System operating guidance, Housing Act 2004; UK Government, When do the clocks change.