RoSPA Press Office : Press Release

October 9, 2006
FLYING THE FLAG FOR BEACH SAFETY

Beach safety flags must now carry the same meaning whenever they are flown around the UK coast, delegates at the National Water Safety Congress will hear today.

A new BSI standard, “Beach Safety Flags: Colour, Shape and Meaning” (BS85041 2006), has been published to reduce the confusion, and potential risks, caused when the meaning of flags varies from location to location.

The standard will help provide clearer water safety information for beach users, which RoSPA hopes will assist in the management of beaches and bring about a reduction in water safety incidents.

Peter Cornall, RoSPA’s Head of Leisure Safety and Chairman of the BSI committee that produced the new standard, said: “For the first time there is an agreed set of safety flags that lifeguards can display to manage the conflict occurring between extreme water sports and swimming or other types of traditional beach recreation. Flags are also used to identify lifeguarded areas of beaches and advise beach users when it is dangerous to enter the water.

“The new standard will mean that wherever you go in the UK and potentially in the world, flags will mean the same thing and they will be required to be used in the same way. For example, a red flag flying means a lifeguard has decided that it is unsafe to swim at that particular moment in time, rather than there are no lifeguards on duty or the lifeguard season has closed for the winter, as we have seen in the past.”

Organisations including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) and Sport England were also members of the committee that produced the new standard. They are also part of the National Water Safety Forum, which will take questions from delegates at this week’s congress.

The conference, organised by RoSPA, will be held at the Stratford Holiday Inn, Stratford-upon-Avon, today and tomorrow (Mon/Tue). It will be attended by representatives from across the leisure industry who have responsibility for water sites, including inland waters, swimming pools, beaches and marinas.

For more information on the congress, see www.rospa.com/water