Hotel owners fined £100k after drowning of girl aged three

THE owners of a hotel in Lytham St Annes near Blackpool have been fined £100,000 after a three-year-old girl drowned in its swimming pool.

Jane Bell from Scotland died at the Dalmeny Hotel in August 2014. An inquest has heard that there was no trained lifeguard on duty at the pool.

At Preston Crown Court, the hotel owners admitted failing to protect the safety of guests under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and were also ordered to pay costs of £19,715.

The youngster, from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, had been on holiday with her parents and six-year-old sister, said the BBC.

She was swimming in the hotel’s main pool when she got into difficulty in the 7ft deep end.

Jane had been in the water for almost two minutes when former lifeguard and hotel guest Carole Greenwood dived in and brought her onto the poolside.
She later died in Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

At the inquest into her death in March, the coroner Alan Wilson said he had concerns about the “risk of future deaths” and called for greater safety measures at the hotel.

The hearing was told that emergency response training for hotel staff began two months after the drowning.

The hotel said staff had “always sought guidance and advice from health and safety experts”.