RAILINGS at the Widnes approach to the Silver Jubilee bridge where West Bank teenager Lewis Millward jumped to his death are 1.65 metres high, an inquest has heard.
The body of the 13-year-old Widnes schoolboy was found on the embankment on July 12, 2011.
Mike Bennett, a Halton Council civil engineer told an inquest into his death: “The legal requirement is one metre for a road bridge.”
He said the railings on the bridge itself had been raised to 1.8 metres, following a request from Cheshire Coroner Nicholas Rheinberg after a similar suicide in 2010.
The work had been carried out between January 2012 and October 2012, once planning permission to alter the listed building structure had been secured.
Two new signs providing telephone numbers for the Samaritans and Calm, the campaign against living miserably, a charity set up in response to the high suicide rate among young men, have now been erected on either side of the bridge.
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