Posted by: CTC Training
There aren’t necessarily any specific swimming pool health and safety laws in place. Although, swimming pool operators need to comply with general duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and its associated regulations.
Operators need to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the health and safety risks to workers and users to help decipher what they must do to make the pool safe. This is known as a risk assessment.
The law does not indicate which safety measures an operator must put in place. As such, judgements must be made by each operator, based on specific risks in their pool.
Guidance and advice
Managing health and safety in swimming pools is absolutely crucial in order to support pool operators in compliance with health and safety law. Following necessary guidance is not compulsory and you are free to take action. But if you do follow the guidance you will normally be doing enough to comply with the law.
Specific guidelines which you need to be aware of are put in place for swimming pools used by the public but also covers segregated areas of rivers, lakes, the sea and other non-standard swimming facilities. It applies anywhere swimming is actively encouraged.
Although, different regulations may apply for swimming in open water such as a lake or pond, which is not maintained as a swimming facility. Young children are, particularly at risk. They could drown in less than 2 inches (6 centimetres) of water. That means drowning can happen in fountains, buckets, inflatable pools, or small bodies of standing water.
Here at CTC Training & Development, we offer a course an Emergency Pool Responder course. Completing this course will gain trainees an award from the Royal Lifesaving Society UK and it is delivered by CTC Training and Development staff that have specific leisure industry experience. Any workplace with a pool must have a member of staff designated as ‘on-call’ to respond to any emergencies. To book this training course, get in touch with us today.
