'The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.'  (H.L.Mencken).
Is RoSPA coming down to earth? See what Tom Mullarkey MBE, RoSPA's Chief Executive had to say about health and safety extremists........... Click here for a Telegraph article published on the 12th November 07.
We asked Mr Mullarkey if the Telegraph article signals a change in RoSPA's attitude to recreational swimming.
He failed to reply.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has recently produced the most convincing proof so far of their obsession with the dangers posed by inland waters and the methods they are prepared to use in order to force their extreme ideas on society as a whole.
Despite being just a charity with no statutory powers, the Society seems to have acquired a perceived image of an authority and enjoys Government grants and royal patronage.
In recent years RoSPA managed to establish itself as the organisation which did the dirty work for local councils and other public bodies who, for fear of litigation in case of an accident, were keen to deny the public access to waters under their control. RoSPA would be called in to produce a water safety report and make recommendations. The results were invariably predictable – a ban on swimming often coupled with the destruction of local beaches and traditional entry points into the water.
In the absence of any organised opposition in the past, RoSPA’s confidence grew with time. Having set themselves up as water safety experts they were regularly invited to issue statements to the media - usually following an accidental drowning in inland waters -

'RoSPA’s Consultants have developed an international reputation for excellence'.(RoSPA website)

in which they often quoted total annual drowning figures in the context of drowning while swimming in rivers and lakes (typically only 10% of the total). They even misled the Court of Appeal in the case of Darby v National Trust [2001]. According to the judgement, Rebecca Kirkwood, a Water and Leisure Safety Consultant to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents told the Court that:
'On average, approximately 450 people a year drown in the United Kingdom, the preponderance of these being young men swimming in open water.' In fact, the true figure is typically less than 40.
In a further display of lack of professional standards, Roger Vincent, RoSPA’s Water Safety Spokesman, declared in June 2005 that 'Inland water in this country does not heat up' – a statement which will be remembered by the swimmers' community for years to come.
However, past blunders fade into insignificance compared with the water safety report which they produced in December 2006 for Leeds City Council (LCC). Click here to download it
The report which was commissioned following the drowning of two young men at Roundhay Park in June 2005 starts off by reprimanding the Council for not implementing previous RoSPA recommendations.(!) It says (in bold, highlighted letters):
The RoSPA consultant notes with concern that none of the recommendations for Roundhay Park have been put into effect. The council is strongly urged to carry out these recommendations and your attention is again drawn to the implications of the Tomlinson case where in effect a Council was strongly criticised and found at fault in law for failing to implement the requirements of a safety review.
The report's numerous recommendations include the predictable swimming ban, as well as the erection of fences and the planting of ‘hostile vegetation’ at the water edge.
The report’s most staggering feature is that, all along, it relies heavily on the Court of Appeal judgement in the Tomlinson v Congleton BC case which did, indeed, justify the recommended measures. What it fails to mention is the fact that this judgement was completely overturned by the House of Lords in 2003 - Congleton Council actually won ! . In fact the law now does not even normally require warning signs – let alone fencing:
It cannot be the duty of the owner of every stretch of coastline to have notices warning of the dangers of swimming in the sea. If it were so, the coast would have to be littered with notices in places other than those where there are known to be special dangers which are not obvious. The same would apply to all inland lakes and reservoirs.[Darby v National Trust - upheld by the Law Lords in the Tomlinson case]
RoSPA is, of course, at liberty to recommend whatever safety measures they think fit. However, in this case they urged LCC to implement their recommendations because, so they claimed, LCC had a legal duty to do so. This calls into question the competence or even the probity of this organisation which enjoys royal patronage. If the intention was to deceive - one wanders what were their motives.
The report contains some entertaining passages – a point not lost on Grumpy OS. However, there is a very serious concern here. It seems that because many local councils are ignorant of the recent legal developments in this field, RoSPA is still able to market its made-to-order water safety reports. In this particular case, LCC were prepared to waste hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money on implementing unnecessary safety measures, depriving the general public of natural beauty spots and damaging the local economy. Hopefully, they will be stopped by the public outcry and the widespread exposure of the flaws in the report. It seems that RoSPA has no intention of acknowledging the new legal climate or of abandoning their misleading and socially damaging practices. We think that action is now called for to stop them before they cause further damage.
What can you do about it? For now, we suggest you write to RoSPA’s patron: HM the Queen, expressing your concerns over what is being done under her patronage and to your MP asking him or her to recommend that RoSPA no longer receives Government financial support.