A range of safety improvements have been made along the River Severn in Shrewsbury following dangers highlighted by a coroner after several river deaths.

Officials at both Shropshire Council and Shrewsbury Town Council have introduced a number of measures under an action plan after comments made by John Ellery, coroner for mid and north Shropshire.

The coroner wrote a report to the unitary authority last year to highlight the dangers the river posed to the public, which has claimed the lives of three young men – Christopher Wall, 21, Hayden Reynolds-Evans, 18, and Joshua Wreford, 24 – in recent years.

Tim Sneddon, head of environmental maintenance with Shropshire Council, said the land alongside the river was managed by various landowners and the council, police, fire service and other partners were all working together to raise awareness of the dangers as well as introducing measures to make it safer.

He said: “There was a safer drinking awareness campaign before Christmas, which will be repeated in the summer. The police led on a scheme called ‘reunite’, where town centre door staff monitor those leaving their premises and make sure they have arrangements for getting home safely.

“We’ve also done many physical things to increase safety along the riverside such as installing new life buoys, and we’re now looking at longer-term measures.

“These include some improvements to existing barriers, some limited additional new safety barriers and provision of ladders to assist getting out of the water should someone fall in.”

“Along with our consultants, we are also reviewing best practice throughout the country to see if there are other measures to improve safety along the river.

“We recently visited York, which has a good reputation for the work they have done when they experienced similar problems to the ones we now have in Shrewsbury.

“One of the ideas we did bring back was to set up a River Severn Safety Group who will meet to specifically consider safety. The first meeting of this group will be towards the end of this month.

“Any longer-term proposals would have to be considered in light of issues such as risk, appropriateness and cost.”

There have been a surge of calls, including the setting up of a Facebook campaign, asking for safety to be improved around the river.

By Russell Roberts