Generally speaking, the owner or operator of the premises owes a duty of care to all who enter and should ensure that the premises is free from safety hazards, including those you can trip or slip on.

The staff also have a legal requirement to record all accidents that happen on their premises in an accident book, which provides strong evidence of the circumstances of the accident. When you do have a trip or slip, even if your first instinct is to quickly pick yourself up and try to pretend nothing happened, be sure to report the accident to a member of staff in case you need this evidence in the future.

If you injured yourself tripping on a defect in a public pavement or road, this is usually a result of the local council failing to maintain the area to the minimum standard. In these cases you are well within your rights to claim compensation from the council for your injuries.

There are a few requirements that must be fulfilled in order to make such a claim; you have to be able to show that the defect is serious and has been there for a long time. The seriousness of the defect is determined by its height or depth (depending on whether the surface is raised or lowered) and the type of surface it occupies. For a defect in the pavement to require fixing by the council it has to be at least an inch high or deep.

If you have tripped over a defect the best thing to do is to take photographs of the defect with a ruler or some other object like a 50 pence coin in the frame, clearly showing the height or depth. In addition to proving the defect was serious, you also need to show that it has been there for a long period of time. The easiest way to prove the defect has existed for a long period of time is to approach a local resident and ask them about it: if they confirm it has been there for the required period then they can be used as a witness for your claim.