All supermarkets have a duty of care towards people shopping in their stores to ensure that their customers are safe. Included in this duty of care is a requirement to follow basic standards of care which are often seen in supermarkets such as clearing away broken glass after a bottle breaks in a store, wiping up any spillages that may occur, removing any items that may have dropped onto the floor of the supermarket and keeping the aisles free from any obstructions that could pose a danger to customers.

If you have suffered a fall in a supermarket or shop - we can help you make a claim and offer a totally free UK legal service.

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When breakages happen in store, fragments of glass can remain even when the mess has been cleared up and such incidents can be especially dangerous for small children who may put their hands on the floor and also for people wearing sandals or flip flops as well as partially sighted customers who may not be able to see the broken glass. However, even those with perfect vision can sometimes miss shards of glass which can be very difficult to spot and as breakages happen quite often in supermarkets, greater care should be taken by the store in cleaning up the area in which the breakage occurred.

These practices, common to all supermarkets, are an everyday occurrence, but because of the number of people usually coming into a store and the frailty of some customers, it is essential that all health and safety matters are taken seriously. Therefore, with liquids being spilt onto the floor, even though the area may have been wiped clean by a member of staff, it is still possible that the area may be slippy for a while afterwards. Also, food trodden into the floor may be slippy and could lead to danger before it is noticed by staff. Other possible dangers include floor mats with upturned corners and excess water at the entrance to the store during heavy rain or snow.

Of course if slips do occur in store, because floors tend to be hard, there is rarely a soft landing and therefore a fall in a supermarket can often lead to serious injury. 

Slips and trips are just one way in which customers can suffer injury in a supermarket. Another is through objects falling onto them, through items falling from supermarket shelves, displays collapsing and items falling from a conveyer belt at a check-out and perhaps painfully landing on someone's foot or onto a small child.

Another likely cause of accidents and one which has increased in recent years has been the number of injuries sustained as a result of shopping trolleys, especially those with faulty wheels, hitting other customers and shopping displays, whilst other potential dangers are faulty child seats within trolleys and supermarket staff accidentally hitting customers by trying to push too many trolleys at once.

There have been examples of customers being injured by trolleys that have an electronic mechanism activating the brake when you stray past a certain point in the supermarket car park. These trolleys have been withdrawn in most of the bigger stores in towns and cities but still exist in rural stores.

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