Six-year-old girl saved from drowning by young boy at Scots swimming pool

dailyrecord.co.uk:

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..