When we think about swimming and spending time in the water, it’s usually the good times that come to mind.

As we are now in the summer term and the weather is improving people are naturally drawn to our outdoor spaces. Many of these outdoor spaces have sites of open water which do not benefit from the professional supervision we may enjoy at beaches.

Most sites do have safety warnings and advise people not to enter the water, but as we know in hotter weather people are inclined to ignore these signs. In recent years this has resulted in several deaths within the open water sites of Greater Manchester, some of the those being young people.

Greater Manchester Fire Rescue Service (GMFRS) crews have seen a rise in young people using open water sites in the past couple of weeks and we want to ensure that our students are aware of the safety messages.

GMFRS produces a range of safety advice for the summer period, please take the time to view the link of their annual Safe4Summer campaign.

Safe4Summer – Greater Manchester Fire Rescue Service

GMFRS also works in partnership with all ten Local Authorities, GMP and United Utilities to provide advice and guidance to keep our communities safe when they are around sites of open water. In 2020 a dedicated Water Safety campaign was launched, a similar campaign will be launched very soon for 2021 and a range of safety messages will be included in this campaign.

Further water safety advice can be found using the below link.

Water safety – Greater Manchester Fire Rescue Service