Thursday, 12pm - AN ELDERLY Horncastle woman has accused Tesco of 'not taking a hazard seriously' after somebody was injured in the same spot she had fallen months earlier.
Marion Robins, 74, of Mareham Road, said she suffered a black eye, sprained shoulder and badly grazed legs after falling in a pot hole in the Watermill Road store's car park in July 2009.
She said she had complained to Tesco and has an ongoing cas
e against them with a personal injuries solicitor.
As reported last month, Horncastle's Elvis impersonator Tommy Peckham injured his ankle in the same pot hole and Marion said: "I was annoyed. It is ridiculous that this accident could have been prevented from happening.
"They have known about this for a while but didn't do anything about it. It would seem that Tesco did not take the hazard seriously and consequently someone else has been hurt."
East Lindsey District Council own the car park and lease it to Tesco who they said were responsible for its maintenance, including lighting and safety issues which people have often complained about.
ELDC released a statement saying: "We have spoken to the Tesco technical manager who has committed to instigating an immediate assessment of the car park lighting and has promised for any improvements to be carried out."
They said the pot holes in the road would be looked at and that they were legally obliged to give Tesco 'a reasonable amount of time' for this work to be carried out and would be monitoring this work very closely to ensure he issues are resolved.
Marion claims Tesco recently carried out re-surfacing work in the car park but failed to sort out this pot hole, located on the road near the main bridge. She said: "This pot hole and others on the road were not filled in although they were marked out in yellow for attention.
"I was very disappointed that Tesco didn't get back to me. All I heard was that they had logged it in an accident book but then that was that."
When the article was featured on the front page of the News on December 9, a number of people aired their views.
Ed Bustin said he had been lobbying Tesco and East Lindsey District Council for something to be done about the car park for the last three winters and last year decided to make formal complaints to the district council and the Health and Safety Executive in Nottingham.
A letter was also sent in by Lynne Hannam who said she frequently uses the Tesco car park in the evenings and finds 'coming out of the brightly lit store in to a pitch black darkness very un-nerving'.
Have you had any bad experiences in the Tesco car park in Horncastle? Send you views to alison.sandilands@jpress.co.uk, write to Horncastle News, Church Lane, Horncastle, LN9 5HW or call 01507 526868.
