Trustees of an Ayrshire leisure centre have been fined after a six-year-old girl almost drowned in a swimming pool.
The schoolgirl was rescued by a heroic 11-year-old boy who pulled the youngster from the bottom of the Galleon pool and alerted a lifeguard.
The incident took place on July 29, 2019 when the girl had been attending a fun swim session with her family at the Kilmarnock leisure centre.
The fun swim incorporated a 15 metre fun run in the main pool and a large inflatable slide which exits into the main pool.
The girl went down the slide and was unable to establish her footing and went underwater and subsequently became unconscious.
Playing in the middle of the 1.5 metre deep pool, the boy 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 torso, shouted over to a lifeguard as he took her to the poolside where lifeguards took over and resuscitated her.
At Kilmarnock Sheriff Court yesterday trustees of the Kilmarnock Leisure Centre Trust admitted failings under Health and Safety at Work legislation and was fined £10,000.
The case 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 of the use of inflatables during fun swimming activity sessions; and failed to ensure they were deployed and used in accordance with the manufacturer’s safety instructions.
They also found that the trust had failed to carry out 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 during fun swimming activity sessions.
"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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