Prudhoe swimming pool banned from using floats
Nov 5 2008 by Sam Wood, The Journal
A SWIMMING pool has stopped issuing water wings and floats – for health and safety reasons.
The flotation aids are designed to keep children safe from drowning, but staff at Waterworld in Prudhoe have been told not to hand them out.
Bosses at North Country Leisure, which runs the Northumberland pool, said inflatables and floats could pass on infections. It then emerged Leisure Connection, which manages swimming pools in Ponteland and Castle Morpeth, operated a similar policy.
But Hexham MP Peter Atkinson, whose constituency includes Waterworld, dismissed it as a ridiculous “directive from the Health and Safety commissars”.
A Northumberland parent, who did not want to be named, said he was stunned when staff refused to hand over any swimming aids for his five-year-old son.
The dad said he had never encountered a problem before when asking for a float, but was told health and safety rules meant he could not have one.
He said: “I believe swimming is an important skill and I’ve been taking him along to the pool every couple of weeks or so.
“There had never been a problem borrowing one of these things before so I was amazed when they refused me.
“I pointed out to the staff that surely it is more of a health and safety issue if the child sinks because he hasn’t got a float. I was just gobsmacked by this.”
Darren Lamb, director of operations at North Country Leisure, said: “We are very grateful to the customer for raising this issue, we try to make sure that all our customers enjoy their swimming experience. In the pools we operate, we normally provide floats when it is safe to do so. We are not worried about getting sued, it is simply a hygiene issue.
“On this occasion there was obviously a reason why it wasn’t [safe] and I can only apologise.
“We don’t provide inflatable devices such as rings and water wings for hygiene reasons. However, these are available for a small fee from our pool reception areas.We review our operating procedures regularly.”
The company operates the same policy at its pools in Hexham and Alnwick.
Conservative MP Mr Atkinson said: “This is just the latest directive from the Health and Safety commissars.
“It is ridiculous that a parent who wants to teach his children an important life skill is hampered in doing that.
“It is a ridiculously over-cautious approach to something which is of great benefit to young people.”
Another company which runs leisure centres in the North East said last night it operated a similar policy. A spokesman for Leisure Connection, which manages swimming pools in Ponteland and Castle Morpeth, said: “We have a policy that floats which would normally be used for swimming lessons are not to be used in public sessions as they are in fact a swimming aid.
“We are finding more and more that these aids are being damaged, so we’re reserving them for use during supervised swimming lessons only. Swimmers can bring their own floats to our pools and swimming-aids are available to buy from all our leisure facilities.”
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