Im absolutely livid...thinking about sending a strongly worded email...

[Twdfn123]

Hi,

So my partner and I were at our local peacocks browsing the clothes and we had our 1 year old son with us. I usually push the pram as i look at baby clothes but my partner took him to go to the mens. thank god! Because as i was browsing a bit of the roof fell down about 2 ft in front of me!

Now if I had been pushing my son, that would have caved in over his pram and he could have been injured! I just sort of stood there frozen and the woman at the till noticed and came over. She said did that just happen and said yes. All she said is they should have fixed it months ago as there is a massive leak up there. Then that was it and she turned around and went about her business.

I get its not her fault, but 1) to not even ask if i was okay (i am just a bit shocked and grateful at the same time my son was with his dad) 2) for the store to not even cordon that corner off if they knew it was dangerous because of the 'bad leak'.
After the lady said that I looked at the ceiling and there was lots of brown patches and drips down the wall as well.

I feel like contacting customer service as i find this all quite appaling to be honest.

Bloody hell OP,that's awful. But unfortunately it doesn't surprise me. I would definitely send them a strongly worded email about it. I had an incident a few years ago in a Tesco store,nothing like as bad as yours though. A member of staff was stacking 2 litre bottles of drink as I walked past. I'm not sure what happened but one of the bottles suddenly came flying off the shelf and whacked me round the side of the head. The member of staff's reaction? He laughed. Looking back,I should have complained about it,not sure why I didn't really. I certainly would if it happened now!

Peak mumsnet😄

Woe that's crazy that he laughed. I think that would have definitely warranted a complaint. X

It's feeling that way 🥲

@Twdfn123 have you read the post about the weight and design of the roof tiles? They are designed to not be dangerous if they fall. I really don’t get what the crying emoji is about.

All well and good but a known health and safety issue where there's a weakened ceiling with drip marks down the wall should be taken care of. It's negligent to customers and staff who work there.

Just because they're designed not to hurt doesn't mean a problem isn't there.

And the crying smiley face emoji to me means confused. As I'm confused that some people are saying I should've just carried on with my day and not even reported it. It at least needs to be repaired to make it compliant and safe. That's why I used it. 🙄

But you did report it to the shop and yes you should have just gone on with your day. It’s a non event. Roof tiles are designed so if one bit fails the rest doesn’t. To me you have over reacted and there is nothing to say that they have been negligent as per my previous post.

Yes they have because they knew of the situation beforehand.

That’s not what negligence means in this context as I have previously explained.

The literal definition of negligence is the failure to take proper care of something, in this case the health and safety standards all retailers must adhere to so i have no idea what you're going on about.

I’ve only got over 15 year’s experience of dealing with employer’s, public and occupier’s liability cases so I guess you know more about negligence than me

I'm not battling with your experience, I don't know you from Adam. I'm just disagreeing that there is no negligence involved whatsoever. Whether that be the manager, the landlord, peacock's or whoever. An issue has been known for a while and nothing done to rectify it to at least make it safer.

Thanks for the sarcasm though, 🙄

That might be your point but you need to stop calling this incident a “near miss”, as that was obviously not the case. Your son was off premises, but by saying “near miss” you’re suggesting he was less than a ft away in the midst of it all. You have the right to complain but you have to be accurate and not misleading and hyperbolic.

'Near miss' is a known term in health and safety. It's appropriate for the OP's experience.

Didn't use the words 'near miss' in my post and everything I said was accurate to me.

Also it was about 2ft away from my own head so still pretty appropriate for this situation

if you dealt with them as casually as your comments on here would suggest you put members of the public at risk.

@publicsafety no deaths reported yet thankfully

Honestly some peoples attitude on herd is so strange to me 🙇

To anyone who is saying to stop calling it a "near miss" this is the HSE definition of what a near miss is and this fits that description:

www.hse.gov.uk/toolbox/managing/accidents.htm

I've been told it needs to be escalated to environmental services by my town council as it classifies as unsafe so I've had to fill out a form and provide a picture. It's been sent to them tonight so hopefully something will be done.

For those of you who said to ignore it, well I hope if this happens to you you would actually report it for other people's sake 😶

You need a compo-face pic for the local paper 😁

Yes, they should have a duty of care to customers, but there are a lot of what ifs here.

Gobsmacked that people think it's no big deal. Of course it is! It's a health and safety issue. And if the store has a commercial lease, these often involve being responsible for repairs. I'd pursue it, not for compensation, but to make sure they do something about it.

Sounds like "comp culture" is rearing its ugly head again