Kilmarnock leisure centre trustees fined, after incident where 6-year-old girl nearly drowned in pool

The trustees of a Kilmarnock leisure centre have been fined, after a young girl, 6, nearly drowned in a swimming pool.

At Kilmarnock Sheriff Court today, the Trustees of the Kilmarnock Leisure Centre Trust were fined £10,000, after they admitted to failings under Health and Safety at Work legislation.

The incident occurred on July 29, 2019, when a 6-year-old girl was attending ‘a fun swim session’ with her family at the pool in the Galleon Leisure Centre.

She went down a large inflatable slide into the 1.5 metre deep pool, but could not find her footing. The girl jumped around in the water and struggled for more than three minutes before she went underwater, where she fell unconscious.

She stayed underwater for 49 seconds, before an 11-year-old boy, who had been playing in the middle of the pool, spotted her.

He dived underwater, picked her up and took her to the poolside, while shouting for help.

The lifeguards then took over and resuscitated the girl.

The trustees of a leisure centre were fined at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court for health and safety failings, after a 6-year-old girl nearly drowned in a swimming pool.

The incident was investigated by East Ayrshire Council’s Environmental Health Service, who found that the Trust had failed to carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessment for the use of inflatables during fun swimming activity sessions.

They discovered that the Trust did not check whether the inflatables were deployed and used in accordance with the manufacturer’s safety instructions.

The Trust also failed to perform lifeguard zone visibility tests, to ensure adequate supervision and control of fun swimming activity sessions.

Alistair Duncan, Head of the Health and Safety Investigation Unit of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, said: “This was a traumatic incident for the young girl involved. An incident, which if not for the intervention of an eleven-year-old boy, could potentially have had tragic consequences.

“I commend him for taking such decisive action and in so doing saving the life of the young girl.

“The measures the Trust had in place at the time were insufficient to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, the safety of members of the public using its pool.

"Hopefully this incident will remind other pool operators that failure to fulfil their obligations in law can have potentially tragic consequences and that they will be held to account for their failings.”

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.