BLOG & NEWS
Why Slip Safety Is a Grip Problem, Not a Slip Problem
Most organisations believe they have a slip problem, when what they actually have is an unmeasured grip problem. Floors can look clean and pass every visual check while still carrying a high risk of slipping, and the only way to know for certain is to test the floor’s actual grip. This is the argument at the centre of the Sliptember 2026 launch episode of the Safety and Risk Success podcast.
[Embed YouTube: https://youtu.be/UaJA49gCvak]
Confidence in slip safety is often built on assumption, not evidence
Most facilities and safety teams believe their floors are in reasonable shape. Cleaning schedules are in place. Signs go up when a spill happens. A risk assessment sits in a folder somewhere. It feels like the job is being done.
Christian Harris opens this year’s Sliptember launch by challenging exactly that confidence, using a real prosecution case to show how a hazard can be managed on paper while remaining completely unresolved underfoot. The episode marks the sixth year of the Sliptember campaign, an awareness effort Christian started to bring the same visibility to slip prevention that Movember brought to men’s health.
The Tesco case shows how a known hazard can go unfixed for months
In August 2015, 91-year-old Dennis Satchell suffered multiple hip fractures after falling in a Tesco Extra store. Tesco was later prosecuted and fined £733,333. Christian discusses the case in detail, having spoken with the environmental health officer who led the prosecution, Justin Strange.
The root cause wasn’t a single spillage. It was condensation from open display fridges, leaking through a blocked drain, repeatedly, for months. According to Christian, Tesco knew about the issue. Properly fixing the drain would have meant closing part of the store for 48 hours, so the response instead was absorbent boom socks and yellow caution signs, reused before they had fully dried. Investigators found the same failure at other Tesco sites using the same fridge model, indicating a pattern rather than an isolated incident.
A warning sign documents a hazard. It doesn’t remove it
This is the belief Christian is most direct about challenging. Putting up a sign can feel like a responsible, proactive step. In practice, it changes nothing about how slippery the floor actually is.
As Christian puts it in the episode, referencing Justin Strange’s view of the case, choosing signs and socks over fixing the drain effectively meant Tesco “knew about the hazard, and chose to manage around it, rather than remove it.” The signage wasn’t a control. It was evidence, later used against them, that the hazard was known and left in place.
The scale of the problem is larger than most people assume
Christian sets out the wider picture using HSE data and industry figures cited in the episode. Slips, trips and falls account for around a third of all workplace injuries in the UK, making them the single largest cause of major workplace injury, ahead of machinery incidents or falls from height. Across public spaces more broadly, slips are linked to over 300,000 A&E admissions a year, equivalent to more than 800 people needing emergency treatment every day.
He also references AXA’s reported spend of £80 million on slip claims in a single year, more than double what the insurer spent on manual handling injury claims, despite manual handling typically receiving far more organisational attention and training investment.
The five common responses to slip risk all fall short on their own
Christian argues that most organisations reach for the same five tools: matting, cleaning, the floor itself, insurance, and signage. Each has a place, but none of them answers the one question that actually matters: how much grip does the floor have when someone walks across it.
Using the CHIMES framework, that question breaks down into six contributing factors: Contamination, Heel, Individual, Maintenance, Environment, and Surface. In the episode, Christian describes the pattern he sees repeatedly across sites: “Facilities managers proudly show me their yellow signs, their cleaning schedules, their risk assessments that haven’t been touched in years,” while the actual measured grip of the floor tells a very different story.
Measuring grip changes the outcome, not just the paperwork
The core method Christian describes, built over more than thirteen years across thousands of client sites, follows four steps: Measure using pendulum testing, Improve through targeted treatment matched to the specific floor, Prove with documented grip data, and Maintain through planned re-testing over time, since slip resistance changes gradually, in the same way physical changes happen without anyone noticing day to day.
He points to specific outcomes referenced in the episode as evidence this approach works in practice: a sixty percent reduction in incidents at Euston station despite very high footfall, a leisure centre operator moving from one claim a week to one claim a month, and a retail and commercial property owner seeing a £65,000 reduction in their insurance premium. These are described as examples from specific client cases, not guaranteed outcomes for every site.
Pull quotes
“It’s not really a slip problem, it’s a grip problem. And grip can be measured.”
— Christian Harris
“Facilities managers proudly show me their yellow signs, their cleaning schedules, their risk assessments that haven’t been touched in years.”
— Christian Harris
“By putting the signs and socks down instead of fixing the drain, Tesco effectively admitted they knew about the hazard, and chose to manage around it, rather than remove it.”
— Christian Harris, describing Justin Strange’s account of the case
Show Notes
Episode summary:
To launch Sliptember 2026, Christian Harris examines the prosecution of Tesco following a 2015 incident in which 91-year-old Dennis Satchell suffered multiple hip fractures after a fall, resulting in a £733,333 fine. Drawing on his conversation with the environmental health officer who led the case, Justin Strange, Christian sets out the scale of the UK’s slip and trip problem, why common responses like signage and cleaning fall short on their own, and introduces the CHIMES framework and four-step Slipology method: Measure, Improve, Prove, Maintain. The episode also launches this year’s Sliptember campaign activities.
Guest bio:
This episode references insights from Justin Strange, the environmental health officer who led the prosecution in the Tesco Dennis Satchell case, drawn from a separate conversation with Christian Harris.
Key moments:
- The story of Dennis Satchell’s fall at Tesco Extra and the resulting prosecution
- How the root cause, a blocked drain and fridge condensation, was managed with signage instead of being fixed
- UK-wide data on the scale of slip, trip and fall injuries
- Why matting, cleaning, signage and insurance don’t solve the underlying grip problem alone
- Introduction of the CHIMES framework and the Measure, Improve, Prove, Maintain method
- Sliptember 2026 campaign details, including free slip tests and upcoming live sessions
Links and resources mentioned:
- Slip Prevention Scorecard, built around the CHIMES framework
- Live masterclass, 9 September, 12:30: “Grip, Not Guesswork: How to Prevent Slip Incidents”
- Live session with Peter Bennett of the No Falls Foundation, 23 September, 12:30
- Site visit and pendulum testing service
Next step
If this episode has you wondering whether your own floors are being managed on assumption rather than evidence, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes a few minutes and gives you a personalised picture of where you actually stand. For the full method behind measuring, improving and proving floor grip, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.