Trustees of an Ayrshire Leisure Centre have been fined £10,000 after a young girl almost drowned in a swimming pool.
The six-year-old was with her family at a fun swim session at Galleon Leisure Centre in Kilmarnock on July 29, 2019, when she had to be rescued by an 11-year-old boy after getting into difficulties in the water.
The youngster went down one of the slides but she was unable to establish her footing.
After jumping around for three minutes and struggling badly to keep her head above the water for 21 seconds, she went under and subsequently became unconscious.
She was underwater for 49 seconds before being saved by the young boy who had been playing in the middle of the pool and felt something touch his foot.
He looked down and saw the girl was curled in a banana type shape with her head facing downwards.
The boy went underwater, picked her up by her stomach and shouted over to a lifeguard as he took her to the poolside where lifeguards took over and performed CPR.
The case was investigated by East Ayrshire Council’s Environmental Health Service who found that the Kilmarnock Leisure Centre Trust had failed to carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the use of inflatables during fun swimming activity sessions and that they were deployed and used in accordance with the manufacturer’s safety instructions.
They also found the Trust had failed to carry out lifeguard zone visibility tests to ensure adequate supervision and control of fun swimming activity sessions..
The members of the Kilmarnock Leisure Centre Trust admitted failings under Health and Safety at Work legislation and have now been fined £10,000.
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.”
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