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East Sussex County Council has had to pay out £3,000 to a rambler who suffered personal injury while walking along a public footpath in June, 2005.
The accident occurred at a Nature Reserve near Hastings when the 63 year-old walker crossed a wooden bridge that formed part of the footpath. She said her foot went down through a gap and she fell backwards.
Fortunately her fall was broken by her backpack that snagged on rusty nails at the side of the bridge.
The woman was said to have suffered undisplaced fractures to the base of her second and third metatarsals, cuts to her right shin and bruising to her left groin. Court papers also recorded that she was wheel-chair bound after her foot was put in plaster and she could not go rambling for nine months after the personal injury occurred.
The council denied culpability for the accident saying the walker should have seen the hole in the bridge and taken care to maintain her own safety.
However, council representatives admitted there was no formal maintenance regime for the bridge, and also acknowledged that in the week after the accident the bridge was re-decked and new handrails were fitted.
A spokesman for the Rambler's Association commented that in some parts of East Sussex the public footpaths were in a "poor and dangerous state" that could only lead to personal injury unless properly maintained as in neighbouring counties, such as West Sussex.
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