Make pools safe: Leader campaign to improve safety around backyard swimming pools

BOTH these backyard pools have no fence — but one passes the safety test. Welcome to Victoria’s confusing pool fence laws.

The pool at the top built before 2010 is legal, while the inflatable one is not, as any backyard pool or spa installed today with a depth of 30cm or more must be fully fenced with a dedicated pool barrier.

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TWO pools, two rules. Neither of these backyard pools has a dedicated pool fence. But in Victoria one is perfectly legal while the other fails the safety test.

It’s the state of confusion that surrounds our pool fence laws and is a situation pool inspector Brett Fitzmaurice says “need to change”.

Mr Fitzmaurice, who runs Pool Safe Inspections Victoria, this week backed Leader Community News’ Make Pools Safe ­campaign, urging the State Government to set up a pool register as well as require pool owners to have mandatory safety checks every three years.

He believes there should be a new Australian Safety Standard applied to all pools across the nation.

“For the past 30 years the legislation has required the home occupier to maintain their barrier at all times. It’s not enough,” he said.

The former City of Banyule employee, a registered building inspector who worked in local government for 11 years, said of the 2000 pools and spas he had inspected throughout his career,
just one spa complied with fencing regulations.

And Mr Fitzmaurice says Victoria still has the dangerous situation where thousands of backyard pools can still legally rely on the house being an effective barrier, instead of a perimeter fence locking off the pool from curious tots.

Planning Minister Richard Wynne has not responded to requests for comment, but Mr Fitzmaurice says retrospective pool fencing laws have been left in the too-hard basket.

He said Victorian laws now lagged dangerously behind other more progressive states, such as NSW and Queensland.

Mr Fitzmaurice started Pool Safe Inspections Victoria two years ago, anticipating the government would act to strengthen laws after a summit in 2012 identified a need for reform, but nothing has changed, he said.

Most of his work involves checking rental property pools for compliance on behalf of owners worried about the ramifications of fencing not being up to standard.

“One of the problems is that in the ’70s through to the ’90s it was often landscaping companies that put barriers in place and they were legally able to rely on the door of a house being a safe barrier,” he said.

Pool inspector Brett Fitzmaurice in front of the unfenced pool in a backyard, which is legal due to Victoria’s confusing pool fencing laws. Picture: Kylie Else

“But to change that now and make the tougher, newer pool laws retrospective would mean many homeowners would find it difficult to make their pool compliant due to the layout of the property. If we can’t make the laws retrospective then we should at least make a set standard for everyone.”

Leader News launched its Make Pools Safe campaign after we surveyed Melbourne councils and found the vast majority of backyard pools and spas failed compliance checks.

Our campaign begins with a call for a mandatory pool register to record all backyard swimming pools and a requirement on owners to obtain a pool barrier compliance certificate when a property is sold or leased.

Twenty-one toddlers drowned in Australia in the past year — more than half in pools — and drowning is the most common cause of unintentional death for children under five.