Number of people falling in Widemarsh Street revealed (From Hereford Times)

Number of people falling in Widemarsh Street revealed

8:50am Monday 6th August 2012 in News By Paul Broome

A TOTAL of 41 people reported tripping over in refurbished Widemarsh Street in the space of 15 months.

The figure was revealed at a recent meeting of Herefordshire Council , two years after the authority spent £1.3 million renovating the city centre street.

Councillor Brian Wilcox urged people to take care after the first few falls before engineers turned to 20mm-wide black gaffer tape in a bid to avert the injuries mounting.

But complaints continued.

Emily Lewis, from Kings Acre, broke her elbows outside Symonds and Co and antiques expert-turned-TV presenter David Barby appeared to fall on Widemarsh Street while filming an episode of the appropriately-named Antiques Road Trip.

Eighty-two-year-old Inge Woolstenholmes, who helped run a bed and breakfast in Whitecross, died in Hereford County Hospital after falling in Widemarsh Street, but the coroner’s office has said her death is not believed to be as a result of the fall or the new street layout.

Herefordshire Council cabinet member for highways Councillor Adrian Blackshaw said the number represents a tiny fraction of the people who walk along the street without incident each day.

“It is inevitable that there will be a small number of incidents every year across the county, not all of which are necessarily reported to the council,” he said.

The latest figures - which equate to 0.0006 per cent of the estimated 122,450 people using the street every week - relate to a period from January 2011 to the end of March this year.