Transport Committee
Oral evidence: National Drowning Prevention Strategy, HC 818
Monday 5 December 2016
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 5 December 2016.
Members present: Mrs Louise Ellman (Chair); Clive Efford; Huw Merriman; Graham Stringer.
Questions 1 – 84
Witnesses
I: Dawn Whittaker, Lead Officer for Drowning Prevention and Water Safety, Chief Fire Officers Association, Sir Alan Massey KCB CBE, Chief Executive, Maritime and Coastguard Agency, George Rawlinson, Chair, National Water Safety Forum, Peter Dawes, Lifesaving Services Manager, Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and David Walker, Leisure Safety Manager, Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
Witnesses: Dawn Whittaker, Sir Alan Massey, George Rawlinson, Peter Dawes and David Walker.
Q1 Chair: Welcome to the Transport Select Committee. Could I have your name and organisation please?
Peter Dawes: I am Peter Dawes, of the RNLI.
Sir Alan Massey: I am Alan Massey, chief executive of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
George Rawlinson: I am George Rawlinson, chairman of the National Water Safety Forum and operations director for the RNLI.
Dawn Whittaker: I am Dawn Whittaker. I am the lead officer for the Chief Fire Officers Association on drowning prevention and water safety.
David Walker: I am David Walker from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
Q2 Chair: Over the summer there was a spate of tragic drowning accidents, which attracted a lot of media coverage and were extremely distressing. Were there more drowning accidents last summer than there were in previous years?
George Rawlinson: Obviously, our thoughts are with those affected. In terms of the numbers, our statistics and the accurate assessment of how many drownings occur month by month have not yet been verified for July and August 2016, but I understand the MCA has this summer’s figures. In general, looking back over the last five years, we see an increase in drownings in July and August. Although it is true to say that we had that spike—it was unusual to have multiple drownings at one location and drownings close to that in terms of time as well—the general trend for the past five years is rather stable for the peak that occurs over the summer. I stress that I do not have the verified figures for coastal drownings from our incident database for August specifically; they need to be released.
Q3 Chair: When will they be made available?
George Rawlinson: We are not due to release them until May next year, and that timescale is dependent on receiving things like outcomes from coroners’ inquiries, court reports and determination of the root cause—for instance, whether a crime was suspected or natural causes occurred—so the National Water Safety Forum releases them on an annual basis.
Q4 Chair: Are the statistics kept in a way that helps to understand trends and what is happening—for example, accidents on beaches or in particular locations or situations?
George Rawlinson: Yes, they are. Once we have our full dataset we can drill down to quite considerable detail: location, activity, age, gender and so on. We have our overall drowning set, and through the database we have the opportunity to interrogate it for particular activities and locations.
Q5 Chair: Mr Walker, do you want to add anything?
David Walker: Sir Alan has the provisional figures that are verified and held by the coastguard, so we have some internal figures that we use year on year. Even though we do not have a statistics set that is verified and quality assured, we have an understanding of the numbers. The reason why we do not release them is that they tend to under-represent the true picture so it can be misleading.
Q6 Chair: In what sense do they do that?
David Walker: For example, some incidents are not recorded or reported for several months. A person might fall in a river and not be found for several days, or a formal report of a drowning death is not given to us, so it can unduly skew the figure in that regard. The members of organisations represented here at the table verify the figures we receive collectively on a monthly basis, so we share and collate that information and do the root and causal analysis trends, but provisionally, because there is legal due process that we need to be mindful of.
Q7 Chair: Would anybody else like to add to that? I would be really interested to know whether you think that the way information is collected is adequate to understand what is happening and to look at trends or particular situations.
Dawn Whittaker: An important point is that thus far we have focused on the publication of the fatalities. From analysis that has been done in our forum, the reality is that for those who may be affected in non‑fatal drownings and, for example, incur life-changing injury as a result of some sort of water incident, the likely figures are of the order of eight times higher than the published fatalities. As a collective of various agencies, we look to enhance that work and analysis over the next number of years, using our publication of this year’s strategy as a platform for doing so.
George Rawlinson: A key point is the importance of gathering as much data as we can from a wide number of sources so that the national picture is fully understood and known about. We are very keen to attract that data as an output of the forum. We have made some good progress on it, but it is really important that we have the raw data. Our analysts can sift through it, remove duplication, find root cause and so on.
Q8 Chair: Rescue services are a combination of the coastguard service, RNLI and other volunteers, but sometimes it is difficult for the public to understand quite how that operates and how the statutory service relates to the volunteers and how things are organised. Sir Alan, can you help us to understand how it works?
Sir Alan Massey: That is true. We do surveys and analysis of what the public think, and it is very frequently the case that people misunderstand where the coastguard stops and the RNLI starts, and where the RNLI stops and volunteer lifeguards and rescue boats start. We try to push the information to the public via various means and we hope to make some inroads, but it is quite stubbornly difficult to get the message across.
To put things in perspective, there are approximately 400 accidental drownings per year around the UK as a whole. In relation to beaches, we are talking more specifically about maritime accident fatalities. Although the numbers are unverified, it might help if I talk about the July and August figures over the past few years. Taking the months of July and August together, between 2012 and 2016, the average was 38.6 deaths. This year it was 46—unverified, but it will be very close—which is an uplift of about 19% above the average figure, but a lot of that, as my colleagues have already said, is attributable to that one tragic incident at Camber Sands when five people were lost, which is very unusual. It tends to be ones and twos.
Q9 Chair: Is that all deaths on beaches, or related to beaches?
Sir Alan Massey: We class them as maritime accident fatalities. They might have been people swimming off beaches; they might have been people in canoes that turned over. It is a variety of different accidental fatalities in shallow water, but at the coast, as opposed to inland.
Q10 Chair: How do the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and other volunteers work with the coastguard? How is it organised, and who decides who will be operating in different areas?
Sir Alan Massey: From the coastguard perspective, our statutory role is as the initiator and co‑ordinator of search and rescue efforts at sea. We draw on the assets made available to us from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and other sources, plus our own coastguard rescue teams, who tend to stay on land or in very shallow water, or helicopters that we operate and have control of. Effectively, any organisation that wants to put up an asset for our use will declare it as a facility for our use. We inspect it and measure it against what we expect in terms of capability, and then it becomes one of our many assets available for deployment. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution as a whole is a declared facility for us.
Q11 Chair: Mr Dawes, how do you work with the coastguard? Who decides who is working where? Is there any one organisation that decides?
Peter Dawes: In relation to the fact that the public find it difficult to know where the RNLI starts and the coastguard finishes, I think that is a positive; it is a tribute to the co‑operative and collaborative nature of search and rescue.
Q12 Chair: But who decides?
Peter Dawes: On the decision-making process, in terms of the assets of the RNLI, it is an RNLI decision as to where we put our lifeboat assets. The lifeguards are slightly different. That is a co‑operative venture with local authorities and landowners.
Q13 Chair: Who is in charge of it? Is any one organisation in charge? Is it what you think is appropriate in discussion with other people in different locations? How does it work?
Peter Dawes: As to the deployment of lifeboats, the first thing we have to meet is a concept of operations. We have defined standards that both give us geographic coverage and ensure that we can respond in an appropriate timeframe. There is a well-tried coast review process where the deployability, location and type of asset in place is regularly reviewed, and in that respect it ultimately goes to the RNLI trustees.
Q14 Chair: Sir Alan, when you are looking at your statutory responsibilities, do you make assumptions about where RNLI and other volunteers will operate, or is it by agreement?
Sir Alan Massey: Yes, we do.
Q15 Chair: Is it always co‑operative and agreed? How does it work?
Sir Alan Massey: If I could walk you through an incident, typically what happens is that somebody rings 999 and says there is somebody in the water who needs rescuing. We look at where that is; local knowledge plays a part in understanding exactly where the location is. Our search and rescue mission co‑ordinator who is on watch in a coastguard station will make a judgment as to the best asset to send. It might be a combination of assets. Typically, if it is somebody in the water, it will be a lifeboat. We call the lifeboat operations manager from the most locally placed lifeboat station and invite them to launch. It is entirely down to them whether or not they make that judgment. They can suggest an alternative, but we trigger that by making a request and, generally speaking, that lifeboat, or one adjacent, carries out the rescue.
Q16 Chair: But who decides where they will be placed? Who decides where you will actually be based? Do you decide that as part of the bigger plan?
Peter Dawes: I will pass that to George, who is the operations director.
George Rawlinson: As the operations director speaking on behalf of the RNLI, we have our concept of operations to provide an all-weather lifeboat fleet and an inshore lifeboat fleet with specific strategic performance standards to be met. We make an assessment of the piece of coastline whenever it is necessary and keep it under review, and we review activity in the area and the potential for harm and casualties going forward. On the basis of that review and our projection, we are able to decide whether or not we have the correct class of lifeboat in the correct area. Before we make any decisions about changes—I am personally involved in the process—we consult the coastguard about the need in that particular area, so there is a hand-in-glove relationship before any decisions are made.
Q17 Graham Stringer: You said in one of your previous answers that drownings normally happen in ones or twos and multiple drownings are an exception. One of the most striking statistics in the briefing notes we have been given is that 40% of people who drowned did not intend to go into the water at all. Can you expand on that?
George Rawlinson: I am very happy to expand on that. The statement is underpinned by robust evidence. To work through some examples of risks for the unwary, perhaps one is involved in coast walking and hill walking and is cut off by the tide, or one is taking one’s dog for a walk on the beach, or perhaps it is even in an urban environment, and the last thing on the person’s mind is that they will end up in the water. An individual or group can be quite quickly caught out if they are unaware of the hazards they are looking at: the work of the tides, the fact that a cliff may crumble, and the fact that slips and trips are one of the common causes of people ending up in the water. A raft of incidents can lead to tragedy, not only on the coast but inland as well. Sadly, alcohol is often involved. In terms of the gender split, a high proportion of those who drown accidentally are men.
Q18 Graham Stringer: Is there any difference in the 40% statistic between coastal waters and inland waters?
George Rawlinson: I do not have statistics on that exact split to hand. My colleague may have a better idea.
David Walker: We can send those to you, but I would suggest that there is no significant difference between coastal and inland waters.
Q19 Graham Stringer: In the July-August period, a lot of television and tabloid reports suggested that there was an increase, and there is going to be a large increase, in illegal immigrants coming to our coastal waters. Did you have direct evidence of that, and has it increased the risk of people drowning off our coast?
George Rawlinson: Not in the sense of illegal immigrants. We have not picked up anything in that regard, but in terms of individuals’ awareness, we have noticed people who perhaps are not used to being around the coastline. If they have come from an area where, say, there is not much tidal range, they have to have more personal awareness before they understand the hazards. From time to time, we come across situations where perhaps a sign needs to be in the form of a pictogram rather than language, if English is not the first language, so that the communication method is right.
Graham Stringer: That is very interesting. You came across no evidence of any attempt by illegal immigrants to come into the country by boat.
George Rawlinson: I am not sure that I understood the question correctly.
Q20 Graham Stringer: We have seen people coming from north Africa and Turkey into Greece and Italy. The tabloid press was saying that we were about to have the same phenomenon, with people coming to this country in leaky boats. Obviously, if that happened, there would be an enhanced risk of people drowning off our coasts, and I was asking whether there was any evidence of it. The answer you gave was to a different question, but it was an interesting one.
George Rawlinson: I understand now. Speaking on behalf of the RNLI, we regularly liaise with the coastguard as our co‑ordinating and initiating agency and, therefore, with other organisations, such as the emergency services and the Border Force. There have been incidents where RNLI assets have rescued people from small boats near the coast, or coastline, but the RNLI’s involvement is not to determine whether people are trying to cross the water illegally. We take them to a place of safety. As we do with anybody we land, we do our best to hand them over to the care of the ambulance service or local coastguard team, who are often there to meet us on arrival. I am not best placed to make a judgment on whether or not the RNLI rescues illegal immigrants, because we do not have that follow-through in our organisation.
Q21 Graham Stringer: Are there any statistics on it, that you know of? Do you liaise with the Home Office on these matters?
George Rawlinson: We do. On that particular subject, I would say it is more for our colleagues in the coastguard to determine in liaison with the Home Office. From the RNLI point of view, the coastguard is the organising hub of the rescues that we carry out.
Q22 Graham Stringer: Sir Alan?
Sir Alan Massey: Yes, we do.
Q23 Graham Stringer: Has there been an increase?
Sir Alan Massey: The numbers are relatively small, but undoubtedly there has been an increase on what has been seen in previous years.
Q24 Graham Stringer: Has that led to any or more drownings?
Sir Alan Massey: I am not aware of any drownings that have been associated with it, but there were certainly search and rescue emergency calls.
Q25 Clive Efford: Are all beaches flagged, or is it just beaches that are covered by either a lifeguard or some other monitoring that takes place through the coastguard agency or someone else? If I was a parent taking my children to a beach, how would I know whether or not it was covered by a lifeguard and how safe it was?
George Rawlinson: Shall I start off from the forum’s point of view? My colleague from the RNLI will have something to add. Not all beaches with bathing waters are flagged or have a lifeguard service on them. There is a lot of information for the general public or potential beach visitors—for instance, through local authority websites and the Marine Conservation Society’s “Good Beach Guide.” We would look for there to be signage at a location when people arrive that, for instance, drew attention to the fact that it was not a lifeguarded beach, or that lifeguards were on duty for a particular time. My colleague from the RNLI is very well versed in the potential number of beaches we are talking about and the proportion that may have a lifeguard service on them.
Q26 Clive Efford: The opening line of the advice I looked at on the Maritime and Coastguard Agency website says, “To make sure you’re as safe as possible, find a beach with a lifeguard.” Is that advice not to go to beaches that do not have a lifeguard?
Sir Alan Massey: No. The advice is exactly as it says: if you want to be safe, the best place to be is on a lifeguarded beach.
Q27 Clive Efford: How do I as a parent taking my children to the beach assess the safety of a beach when there is no lifeguard or anybody to give me advice about local knowledge of the beach? How do I find that out?
Sir Alan Massey: Many beaches have information signs. It is down to the local authority or landowner to make some sort of risk assessment and then provision for the safety of the public who use those beaches. Some are in the class of beaches that have lifeguards on them, and if one is slightly risk averse, that might be the right place to go. Other people like wild swimming away from the rest of the public, so they take a personal risk assessment and make the judgment to swim there. If they want information, it is best to consult the local authority, look at local signboards or just follow signs to a lifeguarded beach.
Q28 Clive Efford: How well do local authorities follow your advice, if it is a local authority-managed beach, or managed by anybody else?
Sir Alan Massey: In truth, it is very variable.
Q29 Clive Efford: What would your advice be to a local authority that had an extremely popular beach that was not covered by lifeguards?
Sir Alan Massey: I probably would not give direct advice to a local authority; that would be for the Health and Safety Executive.
Q30 Clive Efford: Good grief. Why aren’t they here?
Sir Alan Massey: I would guess they weren’t invited.
Q31 Clive Efford: Is it not the RNLI that advises local authorities?
Peter Dawes: We provide some advice. We are not the adviser to local government, but we make advice available. We provide risk assessments free of charge to local authorities. They provide a number of optional control measures, and once local authorities have that information, it is up to them to make those decisions.
Q32 Clive Efford: We could have a very busy beach on the coast where your recommendations and your report suggested, for instance, that lifeguards should be present, but a local authority can ignore that.
Peter Dawes: That is potentially the case.
Q33 Clive Efford: Does that happen often?
Peter Dawes: I would say it is rare, for the reason that most local authorities invite us to provide risk assessments because they want that advice and guidance, and they tend to want to follow the advice.
Q34 Clive Efford: When you are providing local knowledge about the dangers beyond the edge of the sea, which is where your expertise is, local authorities can ignore that. Beyond that, can you advise them, in the absence of a lifeguard or anything like that, what type of flag they should put on a beach, or is that not appropriate because there are no lifeguards there?
Peter Dawes: There are different flags associated with different activities. There is a combination of flags and signage to give information to the public. Flags tend to be temporary and are put out in association with the lifeguard service. In particular, red and yellow flags designate swimming areas, and black and white flags designate board-riding areas. Signage is a little more permanent. We offer advice and guidance on signage. We have made guides for local authorities, in conjunction with the National Water Safety Forum. Local authorities can follow the guidance themselves; they do not necessarily have to engage the RNLI.
Q35 Chair: How does that work? Do you provide risk assessments at the request of the local authority, or can they provide their own?
Peter Dawes: They can do either. In the case of the beach safety audits—the beach risk assessments—we provide those at the request of the local authority. We have to have a willing partner; they need to request the service. But we also provide guidance, such as the leaflets I have here. One is for public rescue equipment, and another is for beach signage and flags. That sort of guidance is available to local authorities, and if they choose they can follow the guidance themselves.
Q36 Chair: Are there many examples where they have not followed the guidance?
Peter Dawes: We are quite fortunate. Whether they have engaged the RNLI or one of the other partners, such as RoSPA, RLSS or Surf Life Saving, they are all capable of providing good guidance to local authorities. Generally speaking, if they have sought the guidance, they follow it.
Q37 Chair: Does it have to be instigated by the local authority?
Peter Dawes: It does.
Q38 Chair: Ms Whittaker, have you had any involvement in this?
Dawn Whittaker: It is pertinent to say that, particularly inland, fire and rescue services have a statutory duty under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 to complete what is known as an integrated risk management plan—a community assessment—and work with local authorities, other agencies and statutory partners to assess risk that exists in localities. More proactively, in some areas there have been some very good assessments of risk posed by quarries, rivers, canals and the like. I refer you to the National Water Safety Forum’s document because there are some case studies in that.
Inquiries tend to be generated when there have been incidents, unfortunately, so usually it is in reaction to some significant occurrence, because local authorities have a wide spectrum of things on their agenda. As we start to talk about the strategy itself, some of your questions may cover this, Chair, but perhaps I could pre-empt them. We are engaging more actively as a forum across all the partner agencies to encourage local authorities and enhance their understanding of what can be done, and where issues exist. It is my belief that many local authorities at parish, district and county level would not be acutely aware of the risk posed in their area by water.
Q39 Chair: How will the new strategy change all that? Will it give somebody a responsibility to look at it?
George Rawlinson: For the way the new strategy is changing it, I use a recent example of collaborative working, good communication and awareness. The team here was fortunate enough to meet representatives of the Local Government Association last week to raise the profile and importance of local authorities that have a border with water and the sea carrying out a risk assessment of that area and deciding, taking account of advice and the components of that risk assessment, what they need to do to mitigate the risk. In answer to the second part of the question, as a forum we are not putting responsibility on local authorities, if I understood that part of it correctly. It is about advice and guidance and raising awareness. To answer the question, “How do I do a risk assessment for my area?” we have a whole network of organisations experienced in that to give advice and guidance on how it is undertaken.
Q40 Clive Efford: This is a question to everyone, if they want to respond. Should there be a statutory responsibility on local authorities to respond to the expert advice you provide to ensure, as much as is possible, safety around open water, whether it is a beach or anywhere else? In my opinion—you can comment on this—it is too lax at the moment. Local authorities can look the other way and not ensure they are doing everything they possibly can to create a safe environment around water over which they have responsibility. Would you like to comment on that?
George Rawlinson: On behalf of the forum, we have not researched in depth the current statutory responsibilities on a local authority, or taken a policy position on that. However, in connection with, say, an integrated risk management plan, or their existing obligations to conduct risk assessments, we wholeheartedly advise them to put the water element of that as high as anything else on their profile, and carry it out and act on it, but we do not have a legal position on it in terms of the law.
Q41 Clive Efford: We have a number of very popular beaches around our coast and a tradition of going to the seaside with families, having days out, holidays and so on—it is part of our heritage and our culture. This might be too subjective and you might not want to comment on it, but would you say that it is utterly irresponsible for a local authority to allow an extraordinarily popular and busy beach to operate without lifeguards?
George Rawlinson: The last thing I want to do is fail to answer the question, but the risk assessment is fundamental in this. The direction of travel for a risk assessment is that, if you have large numbers of people and a beach, there could well be a strong case for a lifeguarded area. If I may add to that, lifeguards are only part of the solution, because typically a lifeguard unit would patrol from 10 am to 6 pm and, if one thinks about a big beach, the patrol area is relatively small, so the question of what happens outside the lifeguarded area remains. The principle of the lifeguarded area is that, if you want to swim, go there, but in terms of the rest of the beach there remains a big challenge for the local authority or landowner in the case of people who just decide to take a swim in the sea. That is an extremely difficult matter to deal with outside a lifeguarded area.
Q42 Chair: Mr Walker, what is your view about any changes that might be needed?
David Walker: Speaking for RoSPA, some of the duties on local authorities are quite clear: the Health and Safety at Work etc Act, Occupiers’ Liability Act and so forth. If you are responsible for a piece of water or land, you should have done some form of risk assessment of it. It will vary depending on the type of use, whether you have millions of users or it is just a very quiet stretch of land. It is not an absolute standard that you must reach, but you should know the risks and what you are doing about them. That is an unarguable and long-standing principle of law.
Q43 Chair: Are the current rules about who should be conducting that risk assessment clear enough, or is it just something that you say is desirable? Is there anything clear about whose responsibility it is?
David Walker: From the point of view of the landowner, it is quite clear that there is a duty under either the Occupiers’ Liability Act or the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, where there is a defined undertaking or workplace. If you invite somebody to, say, a pub by the waterside, the landlord of the pub should have a risk assessment, and ideally so should the person holding the land abutting the waterway. There should be some conversation.
Beyond that, it becomes quite difficult to lever in all the other things we need to do. As George said, quite rightly it is down to the people with the duty to make a choice about the best thing to be done, because they should have the best knowledge; they should know what to do about those things. For example, I hail from Manchester but I would not propose to tell Manchester or another community—Durham or Brighton, for example—what they should do about their risks; it is down to them to make the final decision for their community, but they should understand the risks and go through that process. That is a very clear point.
Q44 Chair: Is there a legal responsibility for an authority to do that?
David Walker: For risk to safety, yes. Dawn talked about the integrated risk management plan, bringing in the emergency services such as fire and so forth. Then there are duties on the landowner, but they can be interpreted very narrowly. They can say, “I have a piece of water and I know of no harm in that area”—it is quite easy for them not to know that— “and therefore I don’t need to do very much about it.” Effectively, they can wait until something happens, which is what we have seen in some communities, although, to be fair to the local authorities we have spoken to and organisations such as the LGA, there is willingness to do something about it.
Q45 Chair: But it is a decision for the local authority.
David Walker: Ultimately, yes, or the landowner.
Q46 Huw Merriman: Sir Alan, I think you mentioned that in 2015 there were just under 40 fatalities on beaches. Is that correct?
Sir Alan Massey: Maritime accidents and fatalities for July and August 2015 were 38, but that might not be just beach swimmers; it could be kayakers, coasteerers and all sorts of things.
Q47 Huw Merriman: Understood. Our papers refer to the water incident database, which recorded 81 deaths, and the time as well. I dare say that is a slightly broader group.
Sir Alan Massey: Yes.
Q48 Huw Merriman: Given that in East Sussex alone there were 10 such deaths in 2015, just to give an example, as a result of what occurred in 2015 did any of your organisations liaise directly with the authorities in East Sussex to say, “There seems to be a particular problem here. These are the steps that you might need to take in order to mitigate it”?
Sir Alan Massey: Mine certainly did not.
Dawn Whittaker: If I become a tad parochial, forgive me, but I am the deputy chief fire officer for East Sussex fire and rescue service, aside from my national role.
Q49 Huw Merriman: I should also declare a parochial interest: I am a coastal MP in East Sussex.
Dawn Whittaker: I moved to East Sussex earlier this year. The fire and rescue service for East Sussex considered the data over the last four years. Of course, the data has been collected for only a certain period of time from all agencies. Given the number of fatalities and injuries—because we have our own data to refer to as well—we included for this year in our integrated risk management plan an analysis of those and we produced a local strategy to work with all local authorities on enhancing awareness and targeting some very specific areas, Brighton being one.
If I may refer to an earlier question, of course visitors to the beach during the day during the summer are a very small part of the risks that exist not only inland with rivers but also in areas such as Brighton. Very often, the night-time drinking culture and the combination of sea and pier provide an additional dimension. As a result, we now have some targeted intervention work in East Sussex, but we seek to influence local authorities across the country. The targeted approach the forum intends to take is not only a risk assessment at the behest, or the request, of a local authority; it is contacting and lobbying the local authorities that have the highest number of drownings, in terms of previous statistics and data, to ensure that we tackle areas of highest risk that have had significant drownings. If I might draw the Committee’s attention to Devon and Somerset’s figures for the last number of years, as a combined fire and rescue service, for example, they would count as the highest area, so we will be doing targeted work in some of those areas.
Q50 Huw Merriman: In a way, doesn’t that sum up the difficulty that members of the Committee are touching on? The fire service has a statutory requirement to provide an assessment. You lobby and meet stakeholders, but ultimately if the local authorities can just decide to take a view rather than themselves having any statutory responsibility to act, are we not in a rather unsafe situation?
Dawn Whittaker: You would be right to say that we provide advice, raise awareness and give guidance, but the fire and rescue services do not have statutory authority or power to require action by a local authority.
Q51 Huw Merriman: With reference to the East Sussex figures for 2015, since then, coming up to 2017, are you aware of local authorities stepping up resources for lifeguard provision as a result of the 2016 incidents?
Dawn Whittaker: I am aware of specific action and work in Brighton, and of course Rother District Council, in terms of the incidents that occurred in Camber, is now in discussion with a number of agencies about what should happen going forward.
Q52 Huw Merriman: Given that when there is an incident on a particular section of road, or maybe more than one but not that many, there is an absolute requirement to take action, be it technology or coverage, shouldn’t the same type of policy be brought in for our coasts? When we know there has been a drowning on one particular beach, which suggests the beach can be dangerous, should that of itself not be a requirement to provide that coverage?
Dawn Whittaker: I and the National Water Safety Forum have drawn many parallels in discussion, particularly on the work of RoSPA on road safety and road accidents—for example, identifying areas as hotspots. You will be aware of the red routes that are identified. There are significant forums for collaboration locally—for example, road safety partnerships—that reutilise funding from speeding fines to undertake safety work. We are at a very early stage in defining this in the case of water, but I see a great deal of benefit in ensuring that congruence is analysed.
Q53 Huw Merriman: Ms Whittaker, you have spoken so well on that particular point that I must ask you this, and I hope I do not put you in a difficult position. It seems to me that you are quite passionate that more should be done. By that token, do you feel that currently not enough is being done?
Dawn Whittaker: As a rescue agency and as a member of the forum, I have committed my time to the National Water Safety Forum because it is my personal belief that we should do more to reduce the number of accidental drownings in the UK than has previously been undertaken.
Q54 Chair: Do search and rescue services work together well with land-based emergency services, Ms Whittaker? Do they operate effectively together?
Dawn Whittaker: I am seeing an increasing and developing relationship between our agencies, with some significant changes in the level of collaboration over the last year and a half or so, particularly with the RNLI, with the Royal Life Saving Society inland and probably through previous work with RoSPA; and, of course, through the forum, there is significant engagement now with MCA and other voluntary organisations, even down to individual charities that are attempting to lobby. All sorts of partners are seeking improvement, not forgetting the families who have been impacted by these occurrences; their voice is very important to the argument. All of the agencies at the table today and other members of the forum are keen to ensure that we listen to what they have to say and engage with those people as well.
Q55 Chair: Is it clear who is in charge?
Dawn Whittaker: In charge of what specifically?
Chair: Of what is happening. There are different groupings: search and rescue, land-based emergency services, statutory services and voluntary services. Is it clear who is actually in charge of what is happening in a particular situation?
Dawn Whittaker: It is clear in the area of the individual’s responsibility. Road safety is very similar; there is no single agency responsible for road safety in the UK. On roads, it is a collaboration of charities, the police, the fire and rescue services and the Highways Agency. It is a very similar situation for water; there is no single agency in charge, but there are statutory responsibilities. The MCA has already articulated its statutory responsibility for co‑ordination. The fire and rescue service has a contributory statutory obligation in terms of awareness of risk. However, the vast majority of the work that has been done on this to date is with large charities.
Q56 Chair: Sir Alan, when the coastguard service was being changed, there was a problem for some time about staffing. Has that problem now been resolved?
Sir Alan Massey: Very nearly. We are at about 94% manning, to be precise, in our coastguard co‑ordination centres. You will recall that as we were going through transition that was a particular risk area, and we were keeping our eyes very closely on it. Recruitment is going well, and we envisage in early 2017 being pretty close to 100%. There will always be some churn, but that is where we expect to be.
In the coastguard rescue service at the moment there is about an 8% vacancy rate. Instead of 3,560, or whatever, volunteers, we are under that number by 8%, but recruitment is going well. In terms of manning, we are in a reasonably good position. Much more importantly, in terms of the whole coastguard network having bedded down, although we are still formally in transition, it is showing signs of being very mature and capable, and certainly an improvement on what we had before.
Q57 Chair: Have you any concerns about how it is operating?
Sir Alan Massey: I have no concerns about how it is operating, but there is always room for improvement. We need to grow more experience in the operators. There was quite a large turnover of personnel as we went through transition. They are getting more familiar with their work. There is no evidence to suggest that any incident has been mishandled, or that there has been any failure of capability. One always touches wood and one has to be a little tentative, but it has been a good story so far.
In terms of collaboration, to add to what my colleagues have said, it is quintessentially British in the sense that there is really nobody in charge of everything. The MCA chairs the UKSAR strategic committee. The National Water Safety Forum is chaired by the RNLI. There are a number of local search and rescue committees around the country chaired variously by fire and rescue services, MCA and Mountain Rescue. It is a little bit of horses for courses. The key point is that collaboration has improved hugely over the last handful of years. I think people have broadly understood that by working together in places such as Durham, for example, you can make a real difference. We have seen the same on the coast as well, but that is not to say there is not much more to do.
Q58 Chair: Somebody looking at this from the outside would say that perhaps there is something concerning when a service that is so important, to do with saving lives, depends so much on voluntary involvement—the RNLI—yet you are telling me that it works. Is that everybody’s view? Do you think there should be more formal arrangements, and we should not have to rely so much on volunteers?
George Rawlinson: On behalf of the RNLI, we have been involved in the sea rescue service for a long time by our charter, governance and byelaws. The declaration that the institution is able to make to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, through the UKSAR strategic committee and onwards to the Department for Transport, is working, and it is a successful model, providing a rescue service up to 100 miles off our coast and reaching 90% of casualties within 10 miles of the coast within 30 minutes. We approach it with professionalism. Notwithstanding being a charity, the service to the UK and the Republic of Ireland is run in a very professional way. From a societal point of view, it certainly works for the RNLI. We have no concerns over that. Our respective chief executives meet and we have good liaison throughout all the layers, right down to the coast rescue stations and lifeboat stations, so I believe that for the United Kingdom it is working very well in that respect.
Q59 Chair: Mr Dawes, do you want to add to that?
Peter Dawes: No.
Dawn Whittaker: To elaborate on that point, there is an incredibly professional service at the coast. However, two thirds of drownings are inland, and that is a significant point that I think the Committee ought to note.
Q60 Chair: Are you suggesting that that is where the bigger problem lies?
Dawn Whittaker: Obviously, the coast is of critical importance, given the number of visitors to it not only from this country but abroad. It is a very important part of the tourist industry and we get enjoyment from the coast, but the data and statistics we have point us to the fact that there is a proportional risk inland that we are only now starting to analyse. Critically, the experience of colleagues who are very professional and well trained could be brought to bear in other areas, and I think we are endeavouring to do that through the forum and our collaborative work.
Q61 Chair: Sir Alan, when we discussed on previous occasions the changes in search and rescue, we were told that the average response times would be improved and shortened. Has that happened?
Sir Alan Massey: If I am not mistaken, I think that was only in relation to helicopters, given their added speed over the aircraft they replaced. We measure our decision time, but we do not set a standard by which we should have made a decision in terms of time. We set a standard in terms of quality of decision.
Q62 Chair: You do not know whether or not the figures we were given have been achieved.
Sir Alan Massey: We have not set ourselves any measure in terms of time to respond.
Chair: We were given figures by the Department, and I just wanted to check on that.
Q63 Clive Efford: To go back to the situation at the coast, the reason I am focusing on it is that one of the people who died at Camber Sands was one of my constituents. You said that flags on their own are not sufficient to warn people about the dangers, and that other information needs to be provided. I do not think I am touching on anything to do with the investigation by the coroner by saying that what contributed to the deaths at Camber Sands was quicksand; people got stuck. Is it realistic to cordon off or put up danger signs on areas of beaches that are prone to that sort of geophysical problem? Is that realistic in terms of applying local knowledge?
George Rawlinson: Could I ask Peter to take that?
Chair: I am aware that there is an inquest, so there are difficulties in going into details, but are you able to help?
Peter Dawes: I will keep my answers generic. The supervisory services, whether it be beach controls or lifeguards, work best when they work with people on the beach. It is not so much a case of signage and flags; it is how much they interact with the public. It is face-to-face guidance, bringing people in, talking about the hazards and potentially requesting that they move to safer locations. That is why it is not just flags and signs; it is the appropriate level of control measures for the hazards that are there.
Q64 Clive Efford: Interesting. You have to be there to do that.
Peter Dawes: You have to be there. If the level of hazard is such that supervision is what is recommended, you have to be there.
Q65 Clive Efford: Aside from what happened in the first part of the summer, as I understand it, post those incidents you provided voluntary lifeguards for the beach at Camber Sands. Is that correct?
Peter Dawes: After the incidents, we engaged with the local authority, so there was an immediate response, and we provided additional services. We provided a lifeguard service. We also provided education services. We moved some of our face-to-face teams into the area and they provided guidance and education to people who were arriving.
Q66 Clive Efford: That happened after the incident involving Mr Da Cruz in July.
Peter Dawes: It happened after the second group of incidents.
Q67 Clive Efford: Were there any incidents in which those volunteers were involved during the August and September period?
Peter Dawes: They were involved in a number of incidents, predominantly first aid, but that is where I guess their experience came in. They spent most of their time doing preventive work. For a lifeguard, every rescue is potentially a failure of their primary task, which is to prevent incidents occurring in the first place.
Q68 Clive Efford: Moving on, young men appear to be particularly vulnerable to death by drowning. Do we understand why that is, what factors are involved and what can be done about it?
David Walker: There have been lots of studies globally looking at that, and studies from other accidents and injury work. I would argue that propensity to take risk, greater participation in sports and activities near water, alcohol and general risk-taking behaviours are some of the stronger factors we need to take into account. What we see in accidental drownings is not greatly different from, say, driving on the road, or from other walks of life—young men in their late teens to early 20s engaging in risk-taking behaviours. There may be men of my age who have had too much to drink and possibly should know better but still do those things. Dawn alluded to piers and water. It may be lads on a stag do jumping from a pier because they do not think it will do them any harm. Those are the sorts of things we see on a regular basis.
The difficulty is how to provide balanced advice to those groups, and educate and inform them. Nationally, there is a statutory obligation for learning to swim and water safety education at key stage 2, which is the top primary age. About 50% of pupils meet that target, so it means that half cannot swim 25 metres in a warm swimming pool. We know that many schools do not provide that to a good standard, so that is the base on which we build all our prevention efforts. We expect people to be able to swim and look after themselves in water, and then we expect them to be able to take that knowledge forward into adult life and ask those questions as they get older. As a society as a whole, that is a longer-term key issue, because swimming and water safety education is the only population measure we have.
Q69 Clive Efford: Would you say there is a correlation between people who are not taught to swim during their school years and those who suffer as a consequence of getting into trouble in water?
David Walker: I would not say it was as strong as correlation, but there are definitely some strong intergenerational factors. We know for a fact that, where parents and communities cannot swim, their children are less likely to swim and that reflects itself over time. As young men become older, if they have no ability to swim at all, they have no chance whatsoever in the water.
There are other factors, such as the hazard of cold water, which we need to be particularly aware of in the UK. Where water is below 15°, the work that Mike Tipton has done in particular shows that it can be hazardous to your health; it can overwhelm your ability to swim. We need to make people aware of the hazard and equip them with base survival skills and the knowledge to go forward. The RNLI and British swimming Swim Safe is a fantastic extension programme where we effectively teach children to swim in controlled cold water scenarios, as do junior lifeguards and others around the coast.
Q70 Clive Efford: As a consequence of what happened at Camber, the Tamil community were keen to engage in a strategy to make people aware of the dangers of water, and to learn to swim. Do you know whether anything was followed up from that?
David Walker: I am sorry; I did not hear that. Which community?
Q71 Clive Efford: The five people who died at Camber Sands were from the Tamil community in London.
Peter Dawes: In terms of our engagement with that particular community, we will be following up with the appropriate education programmes. We have been invited to the community to talk about water safety.
Q72 Huw Merriman: I guess this question is for Mr Rawlinson. The national drowning prevention strategy aims to halve the number of drowning fatalities by 2026. Given what Mr Walker talked about with respect to alcohol, and that 40% of all those who drown do not intend to go into the water, are you confident that that figure can be reached, and how will you go about reaching it?
George Rawlinson: The first way to answer that on behalf of the forum and our respective organisations is that one fatality due to accidental drowning is one too many. In putting together the drowning prevention strategy and considering the evidence, we wanted a stretched target. We have to be realistic about the impact of the five targets we have outlined and the rate of progress against them. In absolute numbers, we will have to assess carefully the impact of the strategy in years one, two, three, four and five and so on going forward. I am confident that we can get a downward trend, given the momentum that has already been built and the interest in the subject. We will know later on in the strategy’s term how achievable that 50% is. Ideally, it would be zero. We will have to track our progress carefully, and harness our partnership approach and the power of collaboration and engagement, for the very reasons we have been talking about, with, say, local authorities. There are any number of examples of communities, charities and commercial organisations we can engage with to make a difference, but we will have to wait to see how that trend develops and whether or not the target will have to be refocused later on.
Dawn Whittaker: The criticality of the strategy is about maintaining our standards of response but enhancing awareness, education and prevention activity. If we take a parallel, in my own industry you will be aware that deaths from fire in the home have reduced by 50% in 10 years. That is because of a determined and focused strategy that increased the public’s awareness of fire safety in the home, the use of smoke detection and things of that ilk. That is exactly what we are endeavouring to do. Therefore, those figures do not seem incongruent, but it will require focused activity, significant support and perhaps national campaign work.
Q73 Huw Merriman: Is the plan to publish interim targets between now and 2026?
George Rawlinson: Yes. We report the absolute number of drownings on an annual basis. We are looking for vanguard organisations to drive forward the five targets within the strategy. We will need to have targets attached to those at a tactical level, and we will need to develop our strategic targets for the forum as well. At this moment in time, under a year after the launch of the strategy, we do not have the ability or confidence to say where we will be in 2019, say, as an interim target, but if we can keep going as we are, we may well be able to detect a downward trend and say that if we keep up that rate of progress we will have reduced it by, say, 15% in five years.
On behalf of the forum, I advocate an interim target, as long as it is well thought through and we have our evidence and the ability to drive forward the initiatives to underpin progress. The forum is a voluntary group of like-minded organisations with similar aims and objectives. Part of our target and strategy is to generate support for the forum and member organisations, and meet the challenge of having other jobs as our employers as well. We have a lot to get to grips with as a forum, but we have made a really good start.
Q74 Huw Merriman: Mr Dawes, to ask a slightly separate question, members of your organisation are volunteers and work without pay. Are there examples where your volunteers are ready, willing and able to provide coverage on the beaches but local authorities are still not taking you up on that, or is there a real shortage?
Peter Dawes: Lifeguard services are a mixture of paid and volunteer members. In terms of local authorities, the reality is that it is not until we engage with them that we offer a lifeguard service. It is not a case of local authorities resisting our presence; we are there because we have engaged with the local authority.
You have heard two words from the group quite a lot: community and education. The reality is that communities are central to any solution to the problem of drowning. Education is on two fronts. We talk a lot about educating the people who visit and use our waters, but the other group that needs education are the duty-holders: land managers and local authorities. Any guidance we can provide them is quite appropriate, because the reality is that they are a significant part of getting a community into action.
Q75 Huw Merriman: I take that, but local authorities would say that another aspect is their lack of cash. Are there situations where it is not a cash issue, because there are volunteers who would be able to provide the service and, therefore, it would not necessarily cost anything, or is everybody working flat out and there are just not enough volunteers at the moment?
Peter Dawes: It is a case of recognising the problem and creating the community solution. There are a lot of voluntary organisations as well as the RNLI. Surf Life Saving and the Royal Life Saving Society also provide services, and they have that opportunity. There is not a never-ending supply of volunteers, but I have never heard of a local authority resisting the opportunity to have a volunteer service.
Q76 Chair: Is there any funding to go with the strategy, Sir Alan?
Sir Alan Massey: The Maritime and Coastguard Agency funds the National Water Safety Forum with an annual stipend, which at the moment stands at £45,000. I think funding is also forthcoming on a voluntary basis from the participating organisations.
Q77 Chair: Are you satisfied that the strategy will address drowning in inland areas, which Ms Whittaker thought we should be looking at?
George Rawlinson: Yes, I am.
Q78 Chair: Let me ask Ms Whittaker, because she raised that particular issue.
Dawn Whittaker: Mr Rawlinson has already mentioned that engagement with local authorities is critical. We have had some positive engagement with the LGA over the past week. We hope to take part as a forum in next year’s LGA conference and produce some guidance from that for local authorities. In seeing through all of that activity, and perhaps requesting a good guidance model, if we do not end up with a statutory obligation, the engagement of local authorities will be key, because the agencies within the forum will not be the responsible authority; it will be the landowners who have a duty of care who must undertake that work.
Q79 Clive Efford: Sir Alan, you said in your answer just now that you provide £45,000.
Sir Alan Massey: Yes.
Q80 Clive Efford: What does it add up to when other bodies contribute, because £45,000 does not sound like a great deal of money?
George Rawlinson: The preface to that is that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents handles our income and expenditure and holds it in trust for the forum. Our members’ contributions, in broad terms, can run up to about £20,000 a year. The key areas of expenditure are the basic running costs of our WAID database—its upgrades and protection against obsolescence—and, where possible, the opportunity to improve it, the quality of our reports and the use of mapping tools as well. In that respect, we get by as a forum, but the resources we lack are the ability significantly to develop our WAID technology. We have a cash-flow source. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the RNLI also supply the administration team for the analytics and the day-to-day operation of the database and production of the drowning reports as well, so that is a cost absorbed among our three organisations.
Q81 Clive Efford: If you do not mind my saying so, that sounds awfully bureaucratic. Money is at the centre. How does that make a difference in stopping people drowning?
George Rawlinson: Through our constitution and governance we are not a grant-making body, as it were, for an initiative here or an initiative there. Our major initiative is the production of the national drowning prevention strategy—one of just a handful of countries in the world—plus raising awareness of the subject, through our discussions with organisations such as the Local Government Association and local authorities; and the power of our network of about 300 organisations to provide advice and guidance to those who need it. There is the existence of specialist working groups and teams—for instance, those involved in producing things like the beach signage guide. Another team works on lifejacket safety and there is one on a hire boat code for inland waters. We have a beach advisory group, which brings in local authorities as well, as a source of information for safety on the beaches. It is more that sort of organisation rather than us funding the specific delivery of the strategic initiative itself.
Q82 Clive Efford: I suppose the next question has to be this: are you satisfied that the organisations with the responsibility to use the information you are collating, providing and disseminating act on that and use it effectively?
George Rawlinson: As far as possible, the evidence is that there is willingness to act on it, but I believe that financial and societal constraints are in there as well. Perhaps I could use as an example water safety education and the strategy’s desire to see swimming lessons available for all children. There is a lot of will to deliver that, but the practicalities, financial constraints and capabilities in delivering it vary. The power of the collective and voluntary organisations comes into play in linking learning to swim with water safety lesson plans in the curriculum to deliver straightforward water prevention messages in schools, whether it is via RNLI lifeguards, the Royal Life Saving Society, RoSPA or other community-based initiatives. Once the lesson plan is produced, we can help with the collation of resources of material for the pack, but the delivery of that is often about the time of volunteers rather than the cost of training or equipment.
Dawn Whittaker: It is worth adding that, through the forum, the partnership’s common understanding of the data and where the risk exists allows individual organisations to go away and have direct delivery impact. If I take an example of that, some recent work between the RNLI, the RLSS and the fire and rescue service in targeting the drink-drown issue around the coast emanated from mutual understanding, a shared campaign and activity on the ground that looks like very live activity—talking to young people, clubs, bars and restaurants in a vicinity—so that common understanding of the data and risk naturally translates into action on the ground without additional funding.
Q83 Chair: Who actually pays for that campaign?
Dawn Whittaker: The individual members of the forum. The RNLI invests a huge amount outside the National Water Safety Forum in respect of the water campaign every year. Other partners in the forum also have individual campaigns. As a collective, they have become more powerful, with a mutual understanding of messaging and where the risk is occurring. We target existing resources.
Q84 Chair: But in terms of paying for campaigns generally, will that come from the partner organisations?
Dawn Whittaker: From partner organisations and very often public donation. That is a very large part of where the funding comes from to influence education programmes.
David Walker: The use of funding to date has focused on risk intelligence and co‑ordination, which, if we go back 10, 15 or 20 years, was not as joined up as it could have been. Although it does not sound like a significant amount of money, we have managed to lever it quite considerably, and the staff officers around the room work very closely to say, “This is what the risk looks like; this is co-ordinated and this is what we need to do,” and then the charities and other organisations, who see that as part of their reason for being, deploy and work in their communities, where they have traditional roots. We have focused on trying to provide risk information and co‑ordination, which charities could not do on their own. We need the partnership for that to happen. Quite frankly, we could not get that type of information from the health service. This is a wider point for the Committee, but as a non-governmental organisation it is very hard to gain access to injury data, so we have had to take this approach and, I suggest, this way of working has had some very beneficial outcomes.
Chair: Thank you very much.