Local authority prosecuted after disabled boy nearly drowned

Date:

14 November 2012

Release No:

HSE-E-104

Essex County Council has been fined for safety failings after a child with severe learning and physical disabilities almost drowned in his school’s swimming pool.

The 9-year-old boy, from Harlow, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was pulled from the water blue in colour and needed resuscitation after the incident during a school swimming session at Harlow Fields School and College on 23 March last year.

The council was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation found that it had failed to provide schools, including Harlow Fields, with adequate information and guidance on how to safely manage and run their swimming pools.

Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court head today (14 November) that the boy and the rest of his class had been in the pool with inadequate supervision.

After coming round at the pool side, he was taken by to the Princess Alexander hospital where he had to stay for 26 hours. His mother, speaking in a statement taken as part of the HSE investigation, said that her son was now frightened of water and was generally not as happy as before.

Magistrates heard that the council, as the employer, should have provided the school with sufficient information to prepare operating and emergency plans for the swimming pool, and should have taken steps to ensure the guidance had been followed.

Essex County Council pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, and was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay costs of £10,110.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Nicola Jaynes said:

"This incident could have ended in tragedy and clearly demonstrates the need for local authorities to provide clear and up-to-date training, guidance and information to schools where they are the employer, so that schools can safely manage their swimming pools.

"It also demonstrates that local authorities have a duty to ensure that where issues haven been identified with schools not following guidance, remedial steps are taken to rectify these failings.

"HSE will not hesitate to prosecute those who put lives at risk and compromise safety."

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "(1) It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.
   "(2) It shall be the duty of every self-employed person to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that he and other persons (not being his employees) who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.
   "(3) In such cases as may be prescribed, it shall be the duty of every employer and every self-employed person, in the prescribed circumstances and in the prescribed manner, to give to persons (not being his employees) who may be affected by the way in which he conducts his undertaking the prescribed information about such aspects of the way in which he conducts his undertaking as might affect their health or safety."
3. HSE news releases are available at www.hse.gov.uk/press.

Press enquiries

Regional reporters should call the appropriate Regional News Network press office.

Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by the Regional News Network