Legality Of Signage?

[cassa333]

Hi,

There is a community group and they own the buildings and land that has a pond on it.

They have put up "danger water"signs but someone has said that if you put up signs you accept liability for anyone getting hurt. However someone else has said that if you don't put them up you are not liable.

Does anyone know which is right?

Thanks

[jno]

off the top of my head, if you're responsible for something dangerous, then not telling anyone about it won't alter your liability. Conversely, if you aren't liable for it then putting up signs won't make you liable.

Whether you're actually required to put up the signs I don't know.

[TonyV]

Cassandra what county is garden in?

[cassa333]

It is a bit of a wonder lol

We are in the UK

[RATTER15]

Ive heard about this before, about putting signs up saying "dangerous dog" or dangerous Bull etc, Its something to do with acknowledging that they are dangerous and you need to take further steps to protect people that may come across them.

[TonyV]

Different counties can have different rules - what county you enquiring about?

[woofgang]

Ratter the issue with the dangerous dog sign is that it used to be that a defence if your dog bit someone was that the dog had never done anything like it before and therefore the responsible person had no way of predicting that they would bite. It used to be said that "every dog was allowed one bite"

My opinion (from investigating having a swimming pool) is that a sign is neither here nor there. If you own something potentially dangerous that the public has access to, or could access, then you are responsible for taking REASONABLE precautions to keep the area safe. I reckon that the group need some legal advice and maybe indemnity insurance.

[buildersmate]

As a community group, they will have insurance - something akin to a village hall policy. These policies include public liability insurance, which provides insurance.
The people that run the group (possibly as trustees) have a liability to make the premises reasonably safe, but in the event that something did go wrong, the risk will be covered by the insurance.
The building and its land should have a simple risk assessment done perilously and the risk of injury from the pond should appear on that. They could agree to erect a sign to help mitigate the risk and/or fence the pond off.
So, putting the sign up doesn't remove the responsibility; not putting a sign up could be considered not taking reasonable measures to minimise the risk but the insurers would still pay out in the event of a claim.
This is a civil law principle that applies across the UK, the county is irrelevant.

[Peter Pedant]

sounds like the typical parish council to me

try this:
file:///C:/Users/Dell/Desktop/AGuideforPondsandLiabilityforAccidents.pdf

if it dont work - google " is there a duty to fence a pond ? "

and quite a lot comes up saying no.



This means to my mind that you can put up signs saying Pond or water or no swimming or dilute nitric acid or whatever and sleep soundly at night

[Peter Pedant]

are they requited to insured against the risk ?
I think that answer is yes

[Peter Pedant]

** are they required to be insured against the risk ?
I think the answer is yes **

sorry c

[cassa333]

Thank you for your answers.

So in essence putting up signage doesn't mitigate responsibility but neither does not putting any up!?

They do have public liability insurances but the insurance company has been a bit wooly about it.

It is a large area pond but because it is a ballenceing pond isn't always full of water (but always has plenty of sludge at the bottom).

In fact over the summer they had to fish out two girls that had decided to walk the fallen ltrees into the middle and got stuck. One of them lost her shoes!