WHILE the landowner and various councils dispute who is responsible for keeping Huntingdon shoppers safe in wintry conditions, social landlord Luminus has ACTED to protect them.

Churchmanor Estates, which owns Chequers Court, Cambridgeshire County Council (the highway authority) and Huntingdonshire District Council, whose employees clean the streets, all denied responsibility for gritting the slippery slope in Chequers Court.

In the meantime, shoppers were falling like ninepins or risking elderly limbs on the town centre’s only real gradient.

But as soon as he read about the problem in last week’s Hunts Post, Luminus chief executive Chan Abraham sent a gritting team to solve the problem in a trice and earn the gratitude of the shopping public, many of them Luminus tenants.

Mr Abraham sent Luminus tradesmen Brian Webb and Ron Baker, pictured, with wheel-barrows, shovels and grit to spread some goodwill to cheer Christmas shoppers, helping children, older people and others stay safe in the icy conditions.

Staff at the nearby Brampton Pie Company said that they recently helped two elderly people who had slipped and fallen quite badly.

One employee said that there was a salt bin nearby but when she opened it she saw that it was “full of chicken bones and rubbish”.

Mr Abraham, who promised to write to the organisations that had denied responsibility, told The Hunts Post: “I am deeply concerned about the responses that each of these respectable organisations gave to a matter of such importance to our local community.

“Luminus employees as well as our customers have adopted a ‘Yes, we can’ approach, which is about accepting responsibility, seeing it as being part of our 2020 Vision in making progress along The Road to Renewal for the mending of our society.

“We are only at the beginning of the winter, so I will be writing to the leaders of these organisations to encourage them to resolve this matter quickly for the sake of the people of Huntingdon.”