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Transcript
of interview for BBC Radio Kent
dated
28.10.04 held at Dragons’ Gym,
Pool interview
conducted by Ian Harker
Interviewees:
Dr
Anou Rao, Local GP and
mother of 3.
Hugh
Robertson, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent and Shadow Minister for Sport
Robin
Fox, Duty Manager at Dragons health and sports club
Ian
Harkner: |
Children
enjoying a swim with their parents, it’s a pleasure many of us take for
granted but mother of three Anou Rao from Maidstone hasn’t been able to enjoy that
pleasure since being barred from entering her local pool because her children
were mainly under 4 and she needed an extra adult. |
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Dr
Anou Rao: |
Effectively
it feels ludicrous that as a parent I can’t take my children on an activity
that they enjoy doing and the fact that they in time are going to lose any
confidence they have in the water. The
only way round this is to have them in a course on lessons and at the current
time that has a waiting list of about 3-6 months. |
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Ian
Harkner: |
So
she hasn’t been swimming at a public pool at all this year and there are
10,000 others like her according to the campaign group Right to Swim which
was born when |
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I
support safety in pools but I don’t support a guideline that in essence bans
anyone from swimming. We should be
promoting swimming for families; we should be making it more accessible for
people who are single parent and those who have twins. We should be helping them to swim not
discourage them and put things in their way and the government are quite
happy to stand back and let it happen. |
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Ian
Harkner: |
And
it is single parents and larger families who are worst affected according to
the campaign, particularly those with 3 young children or more. Essentially the guidelines issued by the
Institute for Sport and Recreation Management don’t bar entry to young
families but as an independent body representing those who run swimming pools
they do lay down guidelines for
child supervision. These recommend
that if the child is under 4 and a non swimmer then they should have an adult
with them in the water on a one to one ratio.
If they are between 4 and 8 then it is one to two. The Shadow Minister for Sport and Kent MP
Hugh Robertson calls the guidelines draconian and unnecessary. |
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Hugh
Robertson: |
I
think it is absolutely stupid and the implication will be that a whole
generation of children who grow up with a single mother or a large family
will be denied the opportunity to learn to swim and that is just disastrous. |
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Ian
Harkner: |
They
may only be guidelines and not requirements but 90 percent of pools across
the nation have adopted them and he wants the Minister for Sport, Richard Caborn to intervene.
Meanwhile some of the parents refused entry at public pools where
using a private club instead. At
Dragons health and sports club in |
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Robin
Fox: |
We
ask that one parent doesn’t supervise more than 3 children in the swimming
pool at any one time. The children are
under 16 and so it could mean anyone from sort of a baby up to 15 years of
age. |
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Ian
Harkner: |
And
have you had any incidents? |
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Robin
Fox: |
We
haven’t, no. |
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Ian
Harkner: |
The
Institute’s website says that the guidance hasn’t come out of the blue but
has evolved over 12 years of consideration and consultation with pool
operators and experts in water safety.
The site says that the vast majority of pools have adopted the
guidance without causing public concern.
This is Ian Harkner for BBC Radio |
Studio Interview
Interviewees:
Ralph
Riley, Chief Executive,
Interviewer: |
Well
listening to that is Ralph Riley, Chief Executive of the |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Good
evening. |
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Interviewer: |
Your
guidelines may have evolved over 12 years but there are not working are they? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Well,
it depends to what extent you think they’re not working. |
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Interviewer: |
Well,
thousands of families are being barred from entry. |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Well,
the idea of the guidelines was to improve safety in swimming pools and over
that 12 year period virtually every swimming pool in the country has adopted
some form of admissions |
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Interviewer: |
But
you are being unrealistic for single mums and larger families being
banned. Thousands of them are. That’s just not right is it? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Well,
they are not necessarily banned in all pools.
What we say is people don’t have to adopt the guidance as we write
it. What we say is look; this is our
guidance to you. What you have to do
by law and this is what legally operators have to do, is to do a risk
assessment and in that risk assessment take into account any national
guidance and so they do the risk assessment.
Now if they believe the risks are less then they can vary the |
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Interviewer: |
But
if you issue guidelines then woes betide any company that doesn’t adopt them
and there is an accident, they will be doubly sued for every penny won’t
they? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
No.
No. The pools have a responsibility
themselves to write their own safety |
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Interviewer: |
Ok. The Shadow Minister for Sport Hugh
Robertson, Kent MP for Faversham says these guidelines are stupid and disastrous. |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Well,
the guidelines as I say were developed by operators out there in the
industry, people who actually have legal responsibility for making sure that
children are safe in swimming pools. We
asked hundreds of them what their |
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Interviewer: |
Ok. So the statistics are there and that’s fine
but your own guidance says the guidelines don’t apply if the child is in a
group being taught to swim by a lifeguard.
Yes? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Not
quite, no. It
doesn’t apply where there is programmed swimming where a class is under
instruction and as such the degree of responsibility is passed on to the
instructor and a degree of controlled is far greater than in an ordinary
public session. |
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Interviewer: |
What
is the difference between that and a parent teaching his 3 children to swim
who can look at what is happening? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Because
you have a controlled…that is like saying, what is the difference between a
classroom environment and a playground environment? The difference is the degree of control and
responsibility that is provided. |
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Interviewer: |
But
they have more people to look after don’t they? If you’ve got a classroom full of people
then they have more people to look at.
If you’ve got a parent who is just concentrating on their 3 children
they are much more in a position than a lifeguard sitting on the side. |
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Ralph
Riley: |
No,
we are not talking about lifeguards we are talking about swimming teachers
who are especially trained to be responsible for children’s safety in a
swimming pool and quite often that swimming instructor is also backed up by
lifeguards in the pool so you don’t have one person, you invariably have 2
and probably 3 and once again the ratio’s are quite specific as to how many
children and what age a swimming instructor can be responsible for. |
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Interviewer: |
Ok. If a child doesn’t get to learn to swim
because of these rules, they can’t go in and learn to swim, aren’t we running
the danger of not exposing them to water in the early years that there could
be a problem when they try to learn to swim outside they don’t know how to
swim? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
We
want to encourage as many children as possible to learn to swim. That is in all our members interest but we
want to encourage them to swim in a safe environment. The fact is that most children learn to
swim either as key stage 2 as part of their school sports programme or else
they learn to swim through a local operated swimming programme. In fact, that is the best way to do it,
it’s a bit like teaching your children to drive a car, it is far better in
fact if you leave it to an expert. |
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Interviewer: |
How
many deaths and injuries are there due to lack of parental supervision? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
There’s
er. I think if you are talking about incidents, we
recently did a survey and in that survey it showed; and then we covered over
500 pools; about one third of the pools in the country, that the incidents,
the average incident in the pool is 10 per year. That is where children are put at risk to a
drowning incident but it could be as many as 100. Drowning that take place are a handful,
probably 3 or 4 a year, that’s all. |
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Interviewer: |
Do
you accept that these rules are right if there are parents across the country who know their own children, who know the
situation, and there are many parents who have been teaching their children
for years how to swim. Do you accept
that many feel that these are completely wrong, the whole guidelines? |
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Ralph
Riley: |
I
can accept the situation that where a pool does a risk assessment and it
takes into account the guidelines and it says “right, ok. We will operate our pool this week”. For example if the pools got areas of
shallow water then the |
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Interviewer: |
Many
parents do not agree, we have heard from them, we just heard from them there
in that report. |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Well,
I mean that may be the case but I mean, we don’t hear from the vast majority
that are not being affected. |
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Interviewer: |
Ok,
right. We are going to have to leave
it there. Ralph Riley thank you very
much for being with us. |
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Ralph
Riley: |
Thank
you. |