A Poole MP has become the borough's second high profile casualty after falling and breaking her hip.

Annette Brooke, MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, has joined the mayor, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, and is now also in a wheelchair - a day after sitting next to her in church.

The MP fell at Poole College on Monday, as she toured the site as part of her education portfolio.

"I tripped," she said, "And I hoped I had put it out of joint but I went to casualty and they said I had broken the top of the femur."

She returned in a wheelchair to her Broadstone home yesterday after an operation where screws were inserted into the bone.

"I don't have plaster," she said, unlike the mayor, who badly broke her left leg in February, skating on a synthetic rink in Falkland Square.

However, Mrs Brooke will spend the next few weeks in a wheelchair but says after this weekend it will be "business as usual" as far as her constituency work is concerned.

The MP intends to return to London on March 28 when she is hosting a big event for the RNIB.

"There is no way I am going to miss that," she said, adding: "I shall be able to work with my laptop from home. It's not the end of the world at all."