Trustees fined more than £11,000 over near-drowning in leisure pool

Five councillors and a business owner have been fined a total of £11,825 after pleading guilty to health and safety breaches that saw a disabled swimmer almost drown in a leisure centre pool in East Ayrshire.

Ryan Deans, 25, had to be resuscitated after being submerged for almost two minutes before the alarm was raised at the Galleon Centre in Kilmarnock in January 2023.

Councillors Iain Linton, Clare Maitland, Barry Douglas, James Adams and provost Claire Leitch were trustees of a company which provided leisure facilities at the centre at the time.

Another trustee who also pleaded guilty, Manpreet Bawa, is not a councillor.

The six trustees were fined £11,825 in total.

In a separate incident at the Galleon centre in 2019, trustees were fined £10,000 after a six-year-old girl nearly drowned in the same pool.

Kilmarnock Sheriff Court heard Mr Deans - who has learning difficulties and suffers from seizures - was a member of the Kilmarnock Jets swimming club which was taking part in a session at the Galleon when he got into difficulty.

CCTV footage was shown of Mr Deans entering the pool by a slide.

He was submerged for a minute and 52 seconds before volunteers from the club realised he was under the water.

He was found face down in the middle of the small pool, with the depth at that point being about 0.8 metres.

Mr Deans was pulled out of the water by the volunteers who confirmed he was still breathing.

The group then shouted to the lifeguard to raise the alarm. An ambulance was called and Mr Deans was taken to the Crosshouse University Hospital where it was found he had suffered a seizure underwater.

Mr Deans' mother has told the prosecutor he had suffered psychologically but it was hard to assess the impact as he is non-verbal.

She said he had lost interest in swimming and had not returned to the club he had been a member of for 15 years.

The local authority investigation revealed inadequate risk assessment and "deficiencies in procedures to ensure, whilst in the Galleon pool, members of the Kilmarnock Jets were not exposed to risks to their health and safety".

Services at the centre had been provided by the Kilmarnock Leisure Centre Trust, which handed over management of the Galleon on 1 April and is due to be dissolved.

Its trustees included SNP members Leitch, Linton and Maitland, plus Conservative councillor Adams and Labour representative Douglas.

The court heard the trustees wanted to put on record their sincere regret to Mr Deans.

A council spokesperson said East Ayrshire Leisure Trust – which took over the running of the Galleon from Kilmarnock Leisure Trust - had "multiple, robust procedures in place to ensure all relevant Health and Safety processes are dealt with to ensure that an accident of this nature should not happen again".

Speaking after the sentencing, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPS) described the near-drowning of Mr Deans as "entirely avoidable".

Debbie Carroll, who leads on health and safety investigations for COPFS, said: "If not for the intervention of volunteers from the Kilmarnock Jets group this incident could potentially have had fatal consequences.

"This case should remind other pool operators that failure to fulfil their obligations in law can have potentially tragic consequences and that they will be held to account for their failings."

In a separate incident at the Galleon centre in 2019, trustees were fined £10,000 after a six-year-old girl nearly drowned in the same pool.