Preventing Slips and Trips in Wet and Icy Weather

This page used to be written as a joke — “how to guarantee an accident” — with the advice inverted. It read well and answered nothing, so we have rewritten it straight.

Autumn and winter turn a car park into the most dangerous part of most sites. The good news is that this is one of the few risks where cheap, obvious controls genuinely work.

Why winter slips are so common

Three things change at once. Surfaces get wet or frozen; daylight disappears from the start and end of the working day; and people move faster because they are cold and want to get inside. The hazard and the exposure both go up together.

Where to put your effort

Outdoors: gritting and clearing

• Grit before the frost. Rock salt needs traffic and time to work, so spreading it the evening before a forecast frost is far more effective than spreading it on top of ice at 8am. Watch the forecast rather than the window.
• Know your priority routes. Decide in advance which paths, car park routes, ramps, steps and fire exits get treated first, and write it down so it does not depend on who is in that day.
• Clear snow before it compacts. Footfall turns fresh snow into ice, and ice is much harder to remove than snow.
• Do not create a new hazard. Snow cleared into a pile that melts and refreezes across a walkway is worse than the snow was.
• Keep grit bins stocked and accessible, and make sure someone is actually responsible for checking them. A grit bin nobody has filled since 2021 is decoration.
• Divert people away from untreated routes rather than hoping they take care.
• Rock salt has limits — it becomes much less effective at very low temperatures. Know what your product is rated to.

To be precise about the law: there is no regulation that says “you must grit”. There is a general duty to ensure health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable, and to assess and control foreseeable risks. Ice in a car park in January is about as foreseeable as risk gets, so it belongs in your risk assessment with named responsibilities and a trigger.

A better trigger than “when it is icy” is “when frost is forecast” — because by the time it is icy, you are already late.

Indoors: the entrance is where people fall

Most winter slips happen within a few metres of a door, on a smooth floor that is wet because everyone walked in on it.

• Matting long enough to work. A small mat by the door dries one footstep. You need enough length for several — several metres in a busy entrance.
• Change or dry the matting during the day when it becomes saturated. A soaked mat is a wet floor.
• Umbrella stands or bags to stop water being carried across the floor.
• Clean up water immediately, and use wet floor signs — then remove them once dry. Permanent signs stop being read.
• Consider the flooring itself. A polished floor in a wet entrance is a design problem no amount of signage fixes. Higher-slip-resistance flooring in the entrance zone is a one-off cost.
• Cleaning creates the hazard too. Mopping a corridor at the busiest time of day is a self-inflicted slip. Schedule it around people.

Lighting

In midwinter, most staff arrive and leave in the dark. Walk your outdoor routes after sunset in December and see what you actually cannot see: the step down, the kerb, the pothole, the pallet left out. Fix the failed lights before the clocks go back, not after.

Footwear

Where people work outdoors or in wet areas, footwear with genuine slip resistance makes a measurable difference — but only if it fits, is comfortable, and the tread has not worn smooth. Check the tread as well as the boot, and treat worn footwear as PPE that needs replacing rather than as the wearer’s problem.

For office-based staff walking across an icy car park, the practical answer is often simply keeping outdoor shoes for the walk in.

Drivers and outdoor workers

• Getting in and out of the vehicle causes more injuries than driving does — wet steps, icy kerbs, jumping down from a cab. Three points of contact, every time.
• Delivery rounds take people onto other people’s untreated paths and driveways, which you do not control. Allow more time and brief people to walk them, not run them.
• Check the vehicle — tyres, tread depth, lights, screen wash and a scraper. Tyres lose grip as temperatures fall, and winter or all-season tyres improve braking in cold conditions.
• Cold and wet workers make poor decisions. Provide appropriate clothing and somewhere genuinely warm to take breaks.
• Carrying loads removes your ability to see the ground and to catch yourself. In icy conditions, use a trolley or make two trips.

Cyclists and pedestrians on the commute

Your duty does not usually extend to the commute, but your people do. High-visibility and reflective clothing, working lights, a helmet, and a sensible route are worth a line in the winter briefing.

Put it in the risk assessment

Seasonal hazards belong in your risk assessment, reviewed before winter rather than during it. Name who does what, when, and what triggers it. A workable seasonal plan fits on one page:

• Priority routes, in order
• Who checks the forecast, and when
• Who grits, with what, and by what time
• Where grit is stored and who restocks it
• Who puts out and takes in matting and signage
• What happens out of hours and at weekends

See our winter workplace guide for the wider seasonal picture, and health and safety training including Level 3 Risk Assessment for the people who write them.

Deals

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Get your winter risk assessment reviewed

Call 0845 838 4643 or use the enquiry form on this page to talk about health and safety or risk assessment training for your team.

Slips and trips are the single largest category of reported workplace injury. The method is set out in workplace risk assessment, our health and safety courses cover assessing and controlling them, and workplace first aid requirements covers what to provide for when one happens anyway. At the start of a year, five health and safety resolutions worth keeping is a short list of what to review.