STOCKTON looks certain to become the first district in the country to ban children under ten from swimming without adult supervision.

Cabinet members of Stockton Borough Council agreed that children should not be allowed in swimming baths without an adult and that decision is likely to be upheld at full council.

The decision was made despite the recommendation of Steve Chaytor, managing director of Tees Active, the organisation which runs the borough’s swimming pools.

Stockton council issued guidelines two years ago that no child should be unaccompanied at any public building, including libraries, under the age of ten after a child was abused at a community centre.

However Tees Active ignored that guide and still allowed children to go swimming without an adult aged eight. The organisation will now be forced to raise the age to ten from January.

Mr Chaytor said he and his team had researched council areas “from Inverness to Portsmouth” but had not found a single one which did not designate eight as the age children could be admitted alone.

Speaking at the cabinet meeting held in Stockton Central Library on Thursday (September 4) Mr Chaytor appealed to the cabinet committee members to stick to the eight-year-old age limit.

He explained that eight and nine-year-olds made about 15,000 visits a year to sports venues unaccompanied in the borough of Stockton.

He said: “I personally wouldn’t have let my eight and nine-year-old girls to go swimming on their own. And for many parents who allow their children to go the penny would drop and they’d start to do the right thing.

"But you know and we know some children do not have the benefit of those kind of parents. The children would no longer be on our doorstep, but they’d be somewhere else, who knows where? This could actually make the safeguarding of children worse.”

Mr Chaytor added that staff were trained in safeguarding, there was CCTV coverage and it was important for children to be active and get involved in sport.

Cllr Ann McCoy, cabinet member for children and young people, stressed that parents needed to take responsibility for children and that the Stockton Safeguarding Children Board had recommended ten as an appropriate age. It was impossible to monitor every child in a public building. The age of eight was an assessment of safety in the water, but not of the rest of the time children were in the swimming pool building.

She said: “Nobody ever said safeguarding children was easy. It’s not. We can’t stop doing things, or making difficult decisions, because it’s difficult.”

It is expected the Full Council will endorse the decision on Wednesday, September 17 at the Town Hall at 7pm.