Message from the Chair

I can’t quite believe its December; 2022 has certainly been a busy one for everyone involved with the NWSF and water safety.

We have had great success in securing additional funding to formally support the launch of Respect The Water as a collaborative campaign which had a significant reach (see campaign report further down). A great deal of work has seen the completion and publication of the annual drowning fatality report in May. A collaborative effort in education has been helped by the efforts of several parents. Colleagues have been in discussion with the Department of Education about the drafting of a core lesson plan on water safety which could be used in schools. There was fantastic support for World Drowning Prevention Day in UK with lots of landmark buildings going blue, also behind the scenes many meetings and collaborative efforts addressed the impacts of extreme dry and hot weather during six weeks in the summer. There has also been significant progress with our new WAID 2 data project which will be a game changer for next year in terms of data quality and capture.

As I write this the World Cup is on, also companies and clubs and students are planning their Christmas parties. Whilst we all want to wish everyone a “Merry Christmas”, we urge people to do so away from waterside locations where safety could be compromised. The Royal Lifesaving Society’s annual seasonal campaign reminds us all about the risk of drinking and drowning and calls on people to “Be a mate” and ensure everyone gets home safely after a night out celebrating.

Who knows exactly what 2023 will have in store? We know that post-COVID and with pools closing due to utility inflation that we will have a generation who have had less opportunity to learn to swim. At the same time, we predict the continued growth in open water and water sports.

Finally, one thing I do know is that we remain reliant on your hard work, collaborative support and pulling together to ensure that drowning prevention and enjoying the water safely remains front and centre of our work, with a determined focus on continuing to ensure we drive down deaths and injuries in water.

Dawn Whittaker

NWSF Chair

#DontDrinkandDrown

We are now in the third week of the Royal Life Saving Society UK’s (RLSS UK) #DontDrinkandDrown campaign.

There is one more week to go to keep sharing the vital water safety messages to ensure everyone stays safe during these winter months.

As we continue to see work Christmas parties and friends and families gather in bars and pubs - as well as football fans enjoying the FIFA World Cup - we need to ensure that the key messaging and safety advice remains front of mind.

We encourage everyone to #BeAMate and ensure you and your friends find a safe route home away from the water after drinking.

On average 80 people lose their lives each year as a result of a substance-related drowning. RLSS UK have lots of free downloadable resources on their website, which we would encourage you to use so that together we can ensure everyone returns home safely.

RLSS UK would like to thank those who have supported the campaign so far.

WAID Update

The Water Incident Database (WAID) is a service developed by the National Water Safety Forum (NWSF) to bring together water-related incident data from a wide range of sources within the UK. It acts as a single repository for the capture of and reporting on fatal water incidents.

Taking the basis of the current system, WAID 2 will build on the good work that has come before with the new platform providing increased automation, a richer dataset, and the timelier capture of incident details.This allows quicker and deeper insights to be made to further improve drowning prevention activities.

As we move into 2023, we intend to start the transition to the new system, build new datasets, dashboards and insights with monthly assured reporting to complement the current annually published data.

Keep your eyes peeled for further updates.

Looking back at 2022

There has been so much going on over the past 12 months as the National Water Safety Forum (NWSF) continues working with partners in drowning prevention.

One of the major highlights of 2022 was the launch of the Respect the Water 999 campaign this summer, which was the largest ever collaborative UK water safety campaign.

Through national media coverage across TV and radio, the NWSF were able to ‘break the echo chamber’ with this powerful campaign. Launched on World Drowning Prevention Day (WDPD), in response to WHO’s invitation to ‘do one thing’ to prevent drowning, the NWSF even featured in the WHO’s roundup in their webinar on July 27.

Through the RTW 999 campaign and with the strength of the NWSF’s powerful networks, over 25 locations lit up blue in support of WDPD.

With dedication, passion and focus, the NWSF and its members, look forward to continuing this great work in drowning prevention in 2023 and beyond.

The Forum have been working hard to put together a plan of forward actions to help us in our concentrated efforts in drowning prevention.

The first of these actions is the launch of the NWSF Workplan, which will guide the Coordinating and Advisory Groups in line with the Drowning Prevention Strategy. The second is the Advocacy Plan, which will coordinate the work of the Forum with external partners and other bodies.

Water Safety Scotland

Water Safety Scotland released the Interim Review of Scotland’s Drowning Prevention Strategy in March 2022.

An impressive amount of work has been undertaken in the last four years by WSS and its members including new education resources to ensure water safety lessons are available for teachers to use across every curriculum level in Scotland.

Additionally, the voluntary Drowning and Incident Review (DIR) process for accidental water-related fatalities in Scotland has been developed after many months of research and planning, with the anticipated launch date of March 2023.

Water Safety Wales

Water Safety Wales has facilitated a Families Group working with families affected by drowning over the last 18-24 months. Leeanne Bartley, a member of the families group who lost her son Mark to drowning, has had significant success with her petition to Welsh Government on drowning prevention.

The Petitions Committee report published in August made six helpful recommendations. Last week the Welsh Government published its response to those recommendations and accepted five and accepted one in principle. The full response is here.

WSW are delighted that the next stage of this process is a full debate in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) on December 7th on the issues raised in the report and Water Safety Wales is working with Leeanne and Members of the Senedd to ensure that opportunity is taken to the fullest extent possible. We will share details of the debate on December 7th when the agenda is published. Our thanks go to Leeanne and her family for their work in getting to this stage.

Celebrate and Stay Safe

It’s the end of the year and for many of us December is a season of celebration. It’s a time to get together with friends, loved ones and let’s not forget all-singing and dancing Christmas parties! Whether it's after-work drinks, family events or fun nights out, messages of staying safe and being aware of your water surroundings are important.

We encourage this time of Christmas festivities to be enjoyed with awareness to avoid potential water incidents.

Looking out for friends, family and colleagues is something we all can do at social events and celebrations.

Simple planning ahead such as booking a taxi home, letting someone know where you’re going and avoiding walking home alone at night by rivers and canals are simple safety measures to ensure the high spirits of the season lead to a safe festive season for all.

We hope you share these safety messages with your friends, loved ones and networks to ensure a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 

Job Vacancy

Community Safety Policy Lead - Civil Service Jobs - GOV.UK

Applications will close at 11.55pm on Wednesday, 4^th January 2023.

What to look out for in 2023

• RoSPA Water Safety Conference 15^th March 2023
• Launch of WAID 2
• 2022 Annual Drowning Report – late Spring 2023
• More on Respect The Water and resources
• Drowning and Incident Review research results

Keep updated by registering for our newsletter here.

Call for stories

As the National Water Safety Forum works with a broad range of organisations and partners, we want to share the powerful work that so many organisations are doing across the board to reduce drowning fatalities. We are collating case studies and stories that truly show the positive impact our partners have across the UK. Please send in your stories to info@nationalwatersafety.org.uk

Message from the Chair

It seems only 5 minutes since I was writing my last address for the additional World Drowning Prevention Day nwsletter last month, but in those few weeks I want to briefly acknowledge how busy it has been for all agencies involved in water safety and drowning prevention. July and the first three weeks of August have obviously seen very high temperatures in the UK with the heatwave and as a consequence the number of people heading to the coast and inland waters “to cool off” has been high...and sadly we have seen the usual relative increase in incidents and fatalities.

When families head out to both UK and foreign holiday locations, it’s important that all agencies continue to share our #RespectTheWater messages, both those that help people understand risk, but also what to do in the event of finding themselves or others in difficultly. Our “Make the right call” and “Float to Live” messages have both helped save lives and I would appreciate it if partners continue to send NWSF any stories of successful rescues to share.

 As we head into September, the NWSF Coordinating Group are preparing for next years’ plan and budget setting and also undertaking a session on “lessons learned” from WDPD 2022 to start preparing for 2023 campaign.

As I head off on leave next week, and for some much needed R&R, I hope you have all had an opportunity for some down time this summer.

Dawn Whittaker

Chair of NWSF

Respect The Water Campaign Highlights

We’re delighted that the Respect the Water campaign, which launched on 25^th July (World Drowning Prevention Day), involved over 50 organisations working as a collective with the joint aim to prevent drowning fatalities across the UK. Thank you to everyone who played a part in making this a truly special and high impactful launch.

As part of the campaign, TV adverts advising people to resist the instinct to jump into water and instead to call 999 in a water emergency were shown throughout the day on ITV.

This included during Good Morning Britain and Coronation Street, then on targeted catch-up TV via ITV player during shows like Love Island. “Make the right call” outdoor banners were featured in multiple high-risk locations across the UK, including Liverpool, London, Manchester, Glasgow and Bath.

In its first week, 394 UK media outlets covered the campaign including 33 TV stations and over 46 national, regional and commercial radio stations. The new Respect the Water website www.RespectTheWater.com also went live on World Drowning Prevention Day, enabling people to share the campaign assets, information and film. These are still available on the website http://www.RespectTheWater.com to be freely used.

Whilst being proud of the success that the Respect the Water campaign is currently having, we are strategically focused on our long-term goals and drowning prevention targets.

David Walker, Head of Road and Leisure Safety at RoSPA, says: “We are overwhelmed by the reach the RTW campaign has had. Our mission is to halve the number of accidental drownings by 2026. This is a strong start and we look forward to building on this success and getting this message out to the public. Our Forum members and partnerships are our strongest allies and this is just the beginning.”

You can receive campaign updates by signing up to the newsletter at https://nationalwatersafety.org.uk/news and follow NWSF on Twitter @NWSFweb to share the campaign message. You can also find related posts across social media by searching the hashtag #RespectTheWater

World Drowning Prevention Day – Thank You for Going Blue

On 25th July for World Drowning Prevention Day (WDPD), over 25 well-known landmarks and emergency service buildings lit up blue across the UK, shining a visual cascade of support for WDPD. Illuminated locations included The Kelpies in Falkirk Scotland, Liver Building in Liverpool, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow and many more. Other creative ways of going blue involved lifesavers and fundraisers from the RNLI using blue sun cream to prompt conversations on the day.

Watch the video to see some locations across the UK that went blue.

Emergency Services Day – 9th September

Emergency Services Day takes place on the 9th September every year and is also known as 999 Day.

It is a day attributed to support the heroic men and women of the NHS and emergency services and is a great opportunity to educate the public about basic lifesaving skills. 

The Emergency Services Day:

·       Promotes our 999 heroes who serve / have served.

·       Educates the public on essential life-saving skills.

·       Promotes emergency services charities and the work they do

·       Promotes campaigns being run by frontline emergency services

·       Promotes career and volunteer opportunities across the emergency services.

Did you know that approximately 2 million people work and volunteer across the NHS and emergency services? Many are volunteers and without them the emergency services could not operate effectively.

We’d like to take this opportunity to highlight and show appreciation to volunteers who are an essential part of the emergency services which include; Special Constables, Retained Firefighters, NHS Community Responders, St John Ambulance, RNLI, Search and Rescue and Coastguard volunteers.

For more information on 999 Day click here.

World Suicide Prevention Day – Creating Hope through Action

September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day and this years’ theme, ‘creating hope through action’ aims to help encourage and empower people to take action to further prevent suicide. The NWSF will be supporting the day on social media.

Our members help thousands of people every year – and while many of these are people who have found themselves accidentally in danger, we are, sadly, also involved with incidents involving suicide, self-harm and people in crisis.

We are incredibly proud of how professionally our members deal with challenging incidents of this nature, and continue to explore ways to better prepare, protect and support our members involved with suicide related incidents.

To find out about World Suicide Prevention Day click here.

Don’t Drink and Drown 12th - 18th September 2022

The Royal Life Saving Society UK’s (RLSS UK) annual Don’t Drink and Drown campaign launches on 12^th September, running until 18^th September, aiming to get the message across about water safety as thousands of students head off to start their first semester at university.

 The campaign aims to speak to students and encourage them to, after a night out, be responsible for their friends, #beamate, and ensure they return home safely.

As fresher’s events take place across the UK in September, many students will be heading to bars and clubs to celebrate the start of their university adventure in areas they are unfamiliar with, we’ll be working with targeted universities to reach students

RLSS UK is currently building their dedicated Don’t Drink and Drown section on their website where social media assets, in English and Welsh, can be downloaded and shared to help spread the key messages, physical resources such as t-shirts, beer mats and leaflets can be purchased, and powerful real-life stories can be found.

We hope we can count on your support to share this vital messaging across the week and help us ensure that every student is able to enjoy their university experience.

A second version of the campaign coinciding with the World Cup and increased night-time economy leading into Christmas will run from 21 November to 18 December. If you would like to discuss potentially running activity in your local area email marketing@rlss.org.uk

Product alert and recalls

·       Trespass "DIVER" Men's Full Body Wetsuit (2207-0284)

·       iROCKER Blackfin Paddle Boards (Models V, X and XL) (2208-0009)

Call for stories

As the National Water Safety Forum works with a broad range of organisations and partners, we want to share the powerful work that so many organisations are doing across the board to reduce drowning fatalities. We are collating case studies and stories that truly show the positive impact our partners have across the UK. Please send in your stories to info@nationalwatersafety.org.uk.