A CARDIFF woman ended up in hospital after falling on a section of pavement residents have labelled “treacherous” and “shocking”.
The pavement where Wentloog Road meets Brachdy Road in Rumney is covered with patches of loose and uneven paving slabs that people reportedly keep tripping up over.
Cardiff Council said an investigation had confirmed that the area was not the responsibility of the local authority.
Jill Foward, who lives in Rumney, said she had only just come out of hospital after being treated for internal bleeding when she went to the chemists on May 24 and tripped on her way out.
“I stepped out of the chemist and I went to hurry across to where the taxi was waiting because I had been longer than I’d expected and my foot caught in the paving slabs, said Jill, 70.
“I tried to save myself three times from going down into a fall, but I couldn’t. I fell flat on my face… knocked my jaw, the side of my head, had bruising to the side of my head and under both eye sockets from the fall, grazed my knees and the palms of my hands were really red.”
The retired vicar went on to say she was “smarting from head to foot” and that she felt “shaken up”.
Jill added: “I can honestly say, before I fell I wasn’t in any discomfort. I can’t walk fast, but I wasn’t in any discomfort and I wasn’t in any pain prior to falling and I have been in pain now ever since.”
When we asked Cardiff Council about the uneven pavement for a news report before Jill fell, the local authority said the land was not considered to be within council ownership and that the reported issue would be investigated further.
The local authority has since got back to us to say the pavement is the responsibility of a private landowner and that it will be writing to them about the issue.
Jill said: “I have respect for the council… but at the end of the day, there are things that the authorities have to be responsible for. I can’t afford to fall at my age with osteoporosis.
“With brittle bones, if you break a bone you become more ill and when you become more ill, you rely on more services to come in and look after you… I might even end up now having to ask to go into sheltered housing if this doesn’t heal as well as I need it to.”
When we asked people two months ago about the loose patches of pavement, some said they had noticed issues with it for more than a year. One woman, Sarah Budd, said she’d seen someone trip over there and called it a death trap. Another woman, Siobahn Poole, said she knew of elderly people and children who had fallen over on the loose slabs.
Jill said she hoped the pavement was sorted soon irrespective of who owned the land as she was not the first to trip over there and was worried she wouldn’t be the last.
She said: “Three falls in the last two years is three falls too many and as I said, this last one was appalling – that somebody of my age should fall over stones which the council knows are wobbly, loose and I am assuming that other people have fallen.
“I think of how many elderly people must use the Well Pharmacy and how many people have actually fallen over these slabs.
“To me, if you look at them and you go and see them… they are accidents waiting to happen and the people who go to the chemist, I would imagine the majority are older people.
“You could have children falling and knocking their teeth out. They are accidents waiting to happen, really.”
A Cardiff Council spokesperson said: “An investigation has confirmed that this area of pavement is not adopted highway, and its maintenance is the responsibility of the private landowner.
“The pavement was upgraded with the owner’s consent as part of the council-led regeneration project in 2016, however the council’s offer to permanently adopt the land was not accepted.
“The council will be writing to the landowner to remind them of their maintenance responsibilities.”
The landowner has been approached for a response.
