Water Safety : Key Issues
RoSPA regularly attempts to identify safety concerns or gaps which if resolved will have a significant impact and safety gain. We seek to maximise our influence by concentrating our limited resources on specific areas, which we call our 'key issues'. We go through this process annually and then determine our key issues. We aim to resolve these issues within a set time period usually 1-3 years.
The over arching issue within Water Safety is the need to improve the standard of safety management of water sites and reduce the number of drownings.
Key Issues
1. The lack of a strategic approach by Government to water safety
The aims were to encourage the Government to establish a single set of civil servants with overall responsibility for water safety (Responsibilities for inland water are spread across several Government Departments and Agencies)
Outcome: We had set ourselves a timescale of two years to achieve a resolution. Encouragingly we have achieved some success in that the major cross cutting review of water safety ‘Roles and Responsibilities’ has been completed and recommendations from that report have agreed with our concerns. Our future work now is to ensure that the proposals are developed and that the NWSC grasps the opportunity to become the national focal point for water safety and the suggested linkages to bring together all the Government Departments and Agencies who have responsibility for water safety or who’s actions affect water safety in some new forum occurs.
Update (October 2005): The National Water Safety Forum has replaced the National Water Safety Committee (NWSC). The re-organisation of the existing committee was prompted by the Government's review into inland water safety, lead by the Department for Transport*. The review, known as 'Roles and Responsibilities' recognised that responsibility for inland water safety was spread across a number of Government departments and recommended the establishment of an interdepartmental group with links to the NWSC.
Following the Government review, the structure of the NWSC was considered. The Government was keen to see a wider, enhanced, membership of the committee to encourage full involvement by all relevant and interested organisations. It was recognised that to enable the Committee to grow its membership, it would be necessary to reorganise, as currently with so many organisations represented, time for relevant issues to be discussed was at a premium. It was also essential to ensure that links with Government were strengthened. RoSPA provides the secretariat for the Forum with funding from the Department for Transport and the Department of the Environment and Rural Affairs.
A dedicated website has been established which explains the aims and the roles of the forum: www.nationalwatersafety.org.uk
*'Inland Water Safety: Final Report of Scoping Study: Present Roles and Responsibilities: August 2002: www.dft.gov.uk
2. To reduce the number of UK tourists drowning abroad
The aim is to pursue the belief held by RoSPA and other members of the NWSF that more could be done to reduce such accidents. A co-ordinated campaign working with partners within the UK and abroad, firstly to raise awareness of the problem and later: improve data collection, issue better guidance and eventually improve safety and design standards, needs to be developed.
Update: RoSPA are taking the lead in the development of new beach safety information and standards, both within the UK and internationally. RoSPA chair the UK Water Safety information standard development committee, on behalf of BSi. And provide the UK expert to the mirror ISO.
Summer 2004 saw the launch of Safety on Beaches. These guidelines aim to alert operators to their responsibilities for public safety on beaches and the range of safety measures available to them. This is likely to be adopted as a European ILSE document.
Currently RoSPA is looking at cases of drownings in Europe and in particlaur those in swimming pools, this follows from a paper that RoSPA presented to the world congress in 2003, highlighting that more British tourist drown in foreign pools than they do in the UK. The aim of the research is to establish if this is a European pattern, and identify the key reasons for the incidents.
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