Rambler wins £3,000 after fall from footbridge

A rambler who broke her foot after falling from a rickety footbridge has won £3,000 compensation from her local council.
Birgit Green, 63, was walking along a public footpath at a nature reserve when a section of the wooden bridge's planking collapsed.
She claimed her foot plunged through a gap and she fell backwards, breaking her foot in two places and injuring her right shin and left groin.
Her foot was placed in a plastercast and she was wheelchair bound for several weeks.
Mrs Green successfully sued East Sussex County Council and was awarded damages after a court heard that the accident, which took place at Combe Haven Valley Nature Reserve, in Hastings, in June 2005, left her unable to return to rambling for nine months.
The council denied liability, claiming Mrs Green, a supply teacher, should have spotted the hole and and stepped over it.
They also denied they had failed to properly maintain the footpath and that the bridge was "fundamentally unsafe."
Instead the council claimed 'rights of way' officers inspected the bridge in the months leading up to the fall and found it to be in a reasonable condition and safe to use.
However, the authority admitted it had no formal inspection regime for the bridge as it was in a rural location and that the bridge was re-decked and new handrails fitted a week after Mrs Green's accident as a matter of "efficiency and good practice".
A spokesman for the Ramblers' Association, said care and maintenance of footpaths was not something councils could 'opt out of.'
"As Britain's leading walking charity, the Ramblers' Association views with concern the evidence highlighted in the recent court case brought against East Sussex County Council by a walker who suffered physical injury due to a poorly maintained footbridge.
"In the legal case brought against East Sussex County Council, dereliction of duty on the part of the Council was established.
"The location of the path and footbridge whose poor state caused the accident was near a residential area in a place promoted by the Council in public leaflets as a leisure amenity, one designated as a Site of Special Scientific Area (SSSI), and one frequently used by people and families as well as by children playing or walking there on their own.'