Pool safety expert backs covers
Geoff Bonham helped write the rules on pool safety, and he thinks pool covers are fine. Assuming your house is fenced.
An industry expert has slammed the lack of legal clarity over the use of pool covers instead of fences. NZ Pool Industry Association executive Geoff Bonham said pool covers were ‘‘extremely safe’’ as covered pools ‘‘completely’’ eliminated the risk of children falling in.
Bonham was part of an advisory group for the new swimming pool barrier laws in 2016.
He criticised the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) for not taking on his advice about pool covers and not providing clear definitions of barriers in the new legislation.
Bonham was also a member of the committee that designed the NZ8500 pool safety standard in 2006.
He said that standard was unanimously agreed by councils, pool experts and water safety bodies and was meant to be incorporated into the Building Code in 2006.
‘‘Everyone was happy and it was decided that ... if you had a fence around your [entire] property and had a sliding door [to the pool] with a door alarm, then as an extra layer of protection an automatic pool cover, councils could give a waiver.
‘‘The powers that be said no we’ve got to rewrite the whole bloody thing.’’
‘‘That’s all written in the NZ8500 standard,’’ Bonham said.
But after becoming a ‘super city’ in 2010, the newly-formed Auckland Council argued the standard could not be used as it was not an act of Parliament and the process to write the Building (Pools) Amendment Act began, Bonham said.
‘‘I kept saying to these guys, but a few people at MBIE didn’t listen. I said we’ve got NZ8500 there, which everyone likes and is meant to be put in the Building Code. If you bring back the committee and tweak it a little bit and then let’s present that to the minister as the Amendment Act that goes with the Building Code.
‘‘But the powers that be said no we’ve got to rewrite the whole bloody thing and now we’re back into a shambles,’’ Bonham said.
The ministry defended the new legislation and said covers did not offer full protection.
‘‘The policy intention is that, other than for spa pool and hot tub covers, barriers must restrict access continuously.
‘‘Swimming pool covers do not restrict access when the cover is open,’’ a spokesperson said.
Bonham said he was not ‘‘anti fence’’ and believed some pools would require fencing. ‘‘But if a guy has four fences around his property and has a door leading out into the pool area, the guy should be allowed to have a sliding door with a pool alarm and as an extra layer of protection an automatic cover, it gives you two layers of protection.
‘‘Whereas at the moment with the fence you’ve got one layer [of protection],’’ Bonham said.
He said pool covers were ‘‘extremely strong’’.
‘‘Anyone can walk on pool covers as demonstrations have shown. Some covers float on water so it’s like a waterbed. It’s held by rails so they can’t come out, they can’t break,’’ Bonham said.
Since the new legislation last year, the ministry received 25 notifications for a wavier or modification to ditch fences for pool covers, 23 of those came from the Marlborough District Council.
Water Safety NZ questioned the use of covers as barriers on residential pools instead of fences and chief executive Jonty Mills said the safety body believed fences were the only acceptable form of barrier. ‘‘We do not believe that the act envisages the use of anything other than fences that prevent children from accessing the water,’’ Mills said.