Leisure centre operator fined £190k after child drowns

A leisure centre operator has been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £190,000 after a seven-year-old girl from east London drowned in a swimming pool.

Michelle Gellard, from east London, died after she went swimming with other children at the Blackwater Leisure Centre in Maldon, Essex, on June 14, 2008, after attending a judo competition.

Chelmsford Crown Court heard there were insufficient numbers of lifeguards on duty on the day of her death and it was members of the public who spotted her at the bottom of the pool's deep end.

Despite resuscitation attempts she was later pronounced dead at Colchester General Hospital.

Bedfordshire-based Leisure Connection Ltd, which operates the pool, was fined £90,000 with legal costs of £101,663.