School's Out: No Duty Owed By School For Swimming Accident

In this case Essex County Council successfully applied to strike out an allegation that it owed a non-delegable duty of care to a claimant injured during a school swimming lesson.

Annie Woodland (by her litigation friend Mark Woodland) v Swimming Teachers Association (1), Beryl Stotford (2), Deborah Maxwell (3), Essex County Council (4), Basildon County Council (5) (Queens Bench Division, 2011)

The facts

The claimant was a 10-year-old school pupil at a school in Essex, for which Essex County Council were the Local Education Authority. She attended a school swimming lesson in the summer of 2000 at the Gloucester Park Swimming Pool in Basildon with the rest of her class. The pool was run by Basildon County Council.

The swimming lesson was supervised by a swimming teacher in the pool and a lifeguard at the side of the pool. Neither the teacher nor the lifeguard were employed by the claimant's school but by a third party, Beryl Stotford, T/A Direct Swimming Services, with whom the school had contracted.

The claimant was in a group of better swimmers, who were taking part in an exercise where they were diving into the pool at the deep end, swimming to the shallow end and then repeating the exercise.

At some point during the lesson, the claimant was noted not to be swimming anymore but to be hanging vertically in the pool. Unfortunately, she suffered a serious brain injury through near drowning.

The claim

Proceedings were brought on behalf of the claimant by her father in negligence against Ms Stotford, the lifeguard, the Swimming Teachers' Association, Basildon Council, who ran the pool and also Essex County Council as the Local Education Authority responsible for the school.

It was alleged against Essex that it owed a non-delegable duty of care to the claimant in the capacity of being in loco parentis, which if accepted would mean that Essex was potentially liable even though the accident had occurred outside of school in circumstances where the school was not supervising.

Essex accepted that it owed a duty to take sure care...