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salt association |
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law
What does the law say about winter maintenance? The Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 made it abundantly clear that local authorities have a legal responsibility to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that safe passage along a highway is not endangered by snow and ice. The problem is that there is no common view on what is ‘reasonable and practicable’ and, so far, there is limited case law on which to base judgements. It will always be difficult to define this precisely, but there is a wide variation in interpretation. A survey carried out on behalf of the Salt Association indicated that adjoining local authorities often employ significantly different practices and criteria. In considering whether an authority had acted reasonably, a court would be likely to consider whether the practices and criteria employed were similar to those used by other authorities.
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