An elderly pensioner who was badly injured after tripping over a drain is angry at the compensation she has received.

Beatrix Walsh, 88, has been awarded 3,000 damages and 10,000 towards legal costs more than a year after breaking her right hip and shoulder when she fell outside her Banbury Road home, in Oxford.

She is upset that despite her ordeal, in April last year, which has left her housebound and suffering from severe stress, Oxfordshire County Council's insurers have decided she is not entitled to any more money because of her age.

The former teacher said: "I was walking to the library and the post office and caught my foot on a manhole cover that jutted up from the pavement.

"I fell on to my right side and was taken to hospital." Mrs Walsh had an operation on her hip and was forced to stay at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and later at the Radcliffe Infirmary, for more than seven weeks.

Now she is confined to a chair and cannot climb stairs. She is also dependent on carers who visit her three times a day and cost 500 a month.

Mrs Walsh said: "The council has the money to fight through the court, but I haven't. It seems to me that they haven't taken into account the terrible stress and trauma I am suffering."

County council assistant highways management director Richard Dix said the authority's insurer, Zurich Municipal, decided appropriate compensation awards. He said: "We are ex- tremely sorry that this lady fell over and that it has affected her in this way.

"But the conduct of the claim is down to our insurers or decided by a court."