A leisure company has been fined a record £330,000 after a five-year-old boy almost drowned in one of its London pools.
Little Blakeney Dear was found face down in the water at a children’s holiday swimming session at the Heston branch of David Lloyd in Southall.
Isleworth Crown Court heard Blakeney was only discovered when a lifeguard told another child to go over and tell him to stop “bobbing” up and down in the pool.
Despite not being able to swim, he was allowed to be unsupervised and was underwater for around five minutes before being pulled out and given CPR by the lifeguard.
An investigation found Blakeney had been allowed to take part in the February 2013 session without armbands, which went against the club’s rules for non-swimmers.
He spent two nights in hospital under observation and sustained no lasting injuries, but council chiefs warned he could easily have died.
In court, the high end fitness firm pleaded guilty to an offence under the Health and Safety Work Act and was fined more than £350,000 by Hounslow Council – a record for the local authority.
Councillor Sue Sampson, cabinet member for community protection at, Hounslow Council, said afterwards: “This serious incident could have resulted in a fatality. Thankfully the child involved has suffered no lasting consequences.
“The council’s thorough investigation has shown that the activity was meant to be run in a structured way, but instead the children were allowed into the pool for ‘free play’ sessions.
“The situation could have been avoided if the club had ensured that staff given the role of running and supervising the swimming activity, and parents enrolling their children to take part, were made aware that children should either be competent swimmers or needed to wear armbands at all times.
A spokesman for David Lloyd said: "The safety and security of our members is our number one priority, and we would like to express our deepest and most sincere apologies to Blakeney and his family for the distress caused.
"It was an unacceptable breach of our child safety policies and we want to reassure everyone that we have taken stringent measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
"Following our investigation, we have extensively reviewed our safety policies to ensure the well-being of children in our clubs continues to be safe-guarded at all times.
"Those policies are embedded into the training that all team members working with children undergo, and we take firm and immediate action if any of the processes are not adhered to.
"We can confirm that the team members supervising the session are no longer with the business."
