Swimming Pool Safety Inspections

By Author: Gary Griffin
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Pool owners face fees for fences and inspections

MORE than 500,000 households with swimming pools in Queensland face fees for swimming pool safety inspections and pool fencing inspections, as the state government comes under pressure to consider recommendations from several coronial inquests. This has come about after a spate of young children drowning in back yard swimming pools with inadequate safety measures in place.
The Deputy State Coroner Mr Paul Simpson last week reiterated recommendations he has made for the past three years - that all pool owners should register their pools with their local council, have child-resistant fences, and be subject to regular safety inspections by council officers or licensed swimming pool safety inspections.
A loophole now exists under which home swimming pools built before 1989, or on large properties, do not have to be fenced. An estimated 120,000 pools in Queensland were built before 1989, and would require safety fences and other modifications to make the safe for children if the changes were approved.
The Minister for Local government, was considering all ...
... of Mr Paul Simpsons recommendations in the inquest of the drowning victim Janice Fuller, a spokesman said. Janice was one year old when she fell into the pool and drowned in January last year, after opening a defective pool gate in her family's backyard.
She was found floating face-down in the pool. In his findings for Janice’s inquest, Mr Simpson said many backyard swimming pools were ''death traps'' for young children.
''The experience of police and coroners is that it is not good enough to simply say that it is the pool owner's responsibility to ensure that the safety fencing surrounding a pool is compliant with the Pools Act,'' Mr Simpson said.
''Something more needs to be put in place to ensure that this occurs,'' he said. ''Janice’s death is just the latest of a large number of similar deaths of young children in backyard swimming pools in Queensland.''
Michael Forbes, from the drowning awareness charity, the Samuel Morris Foundation, welcomed the coroner's findings. ''From our perspective there haven't been any significant shifts since 1992 … to help reduce toddler drowning’s,'' he said.
''At the moment there is no ongoing mandatory inspection, and there is no register of pools.''
Mr Morris started the charity after his two-year-old son suffered hypoxic brain injury after almost drowning in a pool in 2005.
The Swimming Pool and Spa Association supported many of the coroner's recommendations, except for one that gives swimming pool safety inspectors the right to enter a property without the owner's consent.
''Most swimming pool owners are responsible people, and I think this is an aggressive approach,'' said John Higgins, the chief executive of SAPIN New South Wales.
Mr Higgins also said that if the coroner's recommendations were adopted in full by the government, it could end up with our states back yard swimming pool being among the safest in the world.
He gave the example of similar recommendations in other states, where pool owners were to pay between $150 and $200 to have their pools inspected and said this would be a small price to pay to save a child’s life.
A spokesman for the Royal Life Saving Society, Justin Scarr, said he ''stands behind'' each of the coroner's recommendations, and hopes they will ''increase state government action''