Winter maintenance: Why gambling on the weather is the riskiest bet of all
Brendan Aherne, Chief Operating Officer, OUTCO
When facilities managers are asked to trim budgets, outdoor winter maintenance can often come under scrutiny. If the previous winter has been mild then it can seem like an easy saving on paper. However, gambling on the weather is a risk that almost always backfires.
The cost of “doing just enough” can be staggering. A slip on ice can go far beyond a single claim and payout. Wider impacts can include lost productivity, reputational damage and higher insurance premiums. Individual FMs can be personally implicated – should investigations by insurers and courts determine reasonable precautions haven’t been taken. Ultimately, betting against the British winter is like rolling the dice at a casino: the house always wins – and facilities managers often have the most to lose.
To see how expensive this gamble can be, let’s provide a practical example. NB – this is fictionalised version based on a several real case studies in the retail sector. Let’s imagine a hypothetical shopping centre in the south of England called “Cold Bay Park” that attracts around 16,000 visitors a day. In 2024 its managing agent was tasked with finding operational savings. Among the services targeted for possible cost savings was the annual winter maintenance contract. Worth around £18,000 a year, it provided proactive gritting, round-the-clock weather monitoring and auditable compliance records. Keen to make the numbers look healthier, management cut the contract and opt for a reactive approach: gritting would only be called in if forecast conditions demanded it. It seems like a sensible punt. But as seasoned gamblers know, luck has a way of running out.
Early in December, a sudden arctic blast shifts the mild, wet weather to bring icy conditions across much of the country. Even so, the weather in the south was forecast to be above freezing, so the team at Cold Bay Park decide that a gritting service wouldn’t be needed. However, the team doesn’t consider road surface temperature forecasts for their area. These indicate that at ground level things might get far colder. As a result, overnight the already wet car parks and access roads freeze over. Within hours of opening three customers slip badly enough to need hospital treatment. The car park is hurriedly closed. The supermarket at the park sees a 20% drop in footfall as shoppers find safer alternatives. The £18,000 gamble on a mild winter has already been lost.
Scrambling to recover, the FM calls in a contractor to grit the site. With no pre-agreed service level agreement, the response time is twelve hours. By the time gritters arrive, the damage is done: cancelled deliveries, furious tenants, and social media lights up with images of the “treacherous” conditions. The local press writes of stranded shoppers and unsafe conditions.
In the following weeks, an injury claim makes the consequences even clearer. Without service records of the decision-making process there’s no evidence that “reasonable steps” had been taken. A personal injury claim is eventually settled at a cost of around £45,000. Later, Cold Bay Park’s insurers hike annual premiums by tens of thousands for the next three years.
In our example, you can already see the financial hit of this gamble but there’s also reputational fallout. A video of a shopper slipping in the icy car park goes viral under the hashtag #ColdBaySlip. Tenant satisfaction scores fell by nearly a third and two retailers opt not to renew their leases, citing poor site management. December footfall drops twelve per cent. By the time the snow has melted the short-term saving snowballs into a long-term liability. The £18,000 “saving” is dwarfed by £45,000 in claims, £180,000 in lease penalties and compensation, thousands more in insurance premium hikes and £1.4 million in lost sales.
The Cold Bay Park story may be fictionalised, but the risks it illustrates are real. Across the UK, slips, trips and falls are among the most common winter accidents, costing employers hundreds of millions each year. Hidden impacts like reputational damage, operational disruption, legal exposure and lost trust, can be equally costly. For facilities managers, perception is often as important as performance. A safe, well-maintained site inspires confidence that an icy car park can erase – especially when a lurid video can go viral. In an age where corporate and brand reputation matters, the stakes are especially high.
Gritting is not simply about safety; it is about continuity. Frozen access roads delay deliveries, strand vehicles and force businesses to close at the very time of year when demand peaks. In sectors like healthcare, logistics and education, the cost of those delays can be a catastrophic gamble.
There is also the issue of accountability. Insurers and courts now expect clear, auditable trails showing that every reasonable precaution was taken. Without adequate records, liability often falls on the decision makers in facilities management. Moreover, higher standards of what count as adequate and reasonable steps has left those playing a more amateur game increasingly exposed. The gritting industry has become highly professionalised, with the best providers like OUTCO able to deliver gritting schedules, GPS-powered breadcrumb trails of where and when salt has been laid, and records of the forecast data used to back decisions. When things go wrong, being seen to fall short of this higher bar can appear reckless.
Given all these risks, why does winter maintenance still fall victim to budget cuts? Part of the answer is a tendency to underestimate low-frequency, high-impact events. To avoid such traps requires a mindset shift to treat winter maintenance as an investment rather than a cost. This starts with a clear-eyed risk audit, reviewing past incidents and quantifying exposure. Compare the annual cost of proactive gritting with the potential losses from even one serious incident. Build a business case that positions winter services as insurance against multi-million-pound risk. And choose a provider who can deliver guaranteed response times, accurate forecasting and full audit trails.
At OUTCO, we see the benefits of this approach every winter. By combining live meteorological data with pre-agreed service schedules, our teams can treat surfaces before ice has a chance to form. Our digital reporting systems give clients the evidence they need to demonstrate compliance, protect against claims and reassure stakeholders. Most importantly, our proactive model removes luck from the equation. Facilities managers don’t need to gamble on the weather; they can be confident they are prepared.
The lesson from Cold Bay Retail Park is clear. The most expensive decision an FM can make is to cut corners on winter maintenance. What looks like a canny saving can easily snowball into huge liability. With winter fast approaching and budgets under pressure, facilities managers face a choice: make a small investment in proactive safety or keep rolling the dice.
For more information on how OUTCO can bring an innovative approach to your winter gritting, contact 0800 0432 911 email enquiries@outco.co.uk or visit www.outco.co.uk
