A businesswoman who died in flash floods was just four inches from being rescued before she was swept away down a river.

Paula Deacon, 57, was walking just 150 yards home from The Copley Arms in Hessenford, near Looe, with her husband Rod, when she slipped and fell over a knee-high wall. She was carried away by the River Seaton which had been turned into a torrent by a day of heavy rain.

Management consultant Rod, aged 60, told an inquest in Plymouth how he had reached out his arm to pull his wife from the floodwater but had not been able to grab her.

Paula and her husband ran their own business from a converted chapel in the village and she also founded a youth drama group for local children.

Cornwall Council is now considering bringing a health and safety prosecution against the Copley Arms after discovering that a series of risk assessments which suggested replacing the low wall with higher railing had not been acted on.

Rod said he and his wife had gone to the Copley Arms for a couple of drinks and were walking home across the pub's own footbridge over the river when manageress Becky Winn came out with his coat, which he had left behind.

He left his wife at the end of the bridge to go and fetch it but had only gone a few paces when Becky told him his wife was falling. Rod said: 'I rushed back and saw her going over the wall. She had tripped on something and by the time I got there she was in the water. I tried to grab her but missed her arm by about four inches.'

Cornwall Council health and safety officer Lee McDowell said the risk assessment kept at the pub did not mention the river but earlier ones in the brewery files showed that the low wall had been identified as a hazard.

He said there had been two different recommendations to replace it with railings but these had not been acted on.

Plymouth deputy coroner Andrew Cox recorded a verdict of accidental death after hearing that Mrs Deacon may have been killed by the shock of falling into the water rather than drowning.