I’m writing to complain to you in the strongest possible terms about the lack of gritting along the towpath of the Farmer’s Bridge lock flight, Birmingham City Centre.

This morning, between the top lock and lock number seven (where I disembark) walking along it to work I slipped and fell over not once but four times; I was reduced to descending the lock ramps by squatting & sliding myself down with my hands behind me for balance. You can imagine I’m sure the dangers inherent in slipping on the ice next to a lock, especially if one fell into the frozen lock itself.

I appreciate that British Waterways can control neither the weather nor the temperature, and that there’s little you can do to ensure passage for boats when the canal itself freezes over. However, you can control the pedestrian environment, with the application of salt / grit to ensure key strategic pedestrian routes such as this are safe for the people who use them regularly; the nature of that section of towpath route is such that once one has started going that way you are pretty much committed, as leaving the towpath to take a different route isn’t so simple. Once I reached the normal pavement – which the council is responsible for – my passage was completely fine, so if the council manages to grit the pavement, how can British Waterways not manage to grit the city centre towpath ?

Fortunately neither myself nor my laptop and phone were damaged in my four falls due to British Waterways’ negligence in failing to make the towpath safe, however be assured that had anything been damaged, I would be holding you liable. In this age of no-win-no-fee personal accident law firms advertising on television, I urge you to arrange for the key strategic pedestrian routes in Birmingham to be gritted and made safe as soon as possible, before another member of the public has a more serious accident, and my British Waterways licence money has to be used to pay out on a hefty compensation claim rather than its proper use of paying for the maintenance of the network.

in Friendship,