A JURY in the inquest into the death of a great grandmother has concluded she died from fatal complications arising from an accidental fall while Christmas shopping in a Tesco store.

Bradford Coroner's Court heard that Esther Payne, 90, of Steeton who was described as fit and “feisty”, broke her left hip after an unexplained collision involving a staff member and a roll-cage trolley of beauty products.

Mrs Payne was in Tesco, Ilkley, with her daughter on December 21 buying luxuries for the Christmas dinner which she cooked for her family every year.

After the fall she was taken to Airedale Hospital, where although her hip was pinned, her health declined rapidly and she died from a heat attack on January 3.

Doctors gave her cause of death as a heart attack with additional factors including renal failure, systematic heart conditions and the break to her leg.

The court heard that one in ten patients with that sort of injury die within a month and three in ten die within a year after surgery.

On the second day of the inquest, Assistant Coroner Dominic Bell asked Tesco's Group Safety Director Stephen Purser for assurances that such roll cages were pulled round its stores in accordance with its safety policy.

"I can say in confidence that we have gone to quite extensive efforts to make sure everyone in our organisation knows that the instruction when using a roll cage is to pull, not push it," Mr Purser said.

He revealed that Tesco employs 300,000 people in its 3,500 stores and uses one million wire roll cages to stock its shelves.

About 17 million shoppers go through its doors every month and only ten were involved in accidents with roll cages in the past year.

Mr Purser also said there was no CCTV coverage of Mrs Payne's fall as cameras were only targeted to catch shoplifters rather than monitor whole stores for customer safety.

Bradford Council Health and Safety investigator Jane Bradbury told how she made a scheduled inspection of to the Ilkley store following Mrs Payne's death and saw evidence that roll cages were being moved contrary to Tesco's in-house rules: "At the time of my visit there was a member of staff pushing a roll cage."

However she believed staff training was fit for purpose and there was no need for remedial action.

She asked to see CCTV footage, but was told the store's eight cameras had missed the incident which was in a blind spot.

Tesco's barrister Emily Formby and coroner Mr Bell explained to the jury that lack of any eyewitnesses to Mrs Payne's fall made it impossible to define its cause and that it was also not the inquest's role to try and attach blame to individuals or organisations.

The jury reached the conclusion that while Mrs Payne's death was due to a heart attack and existing medical conditions, there were complications arising from the accident in Tesco.