Communicating swimming pool risks

There’s a story in the Herald tending to imply that the government is planning to repeal the laws that require fences around swimming pools, and that this will cost about 70 lives over the next ten years, for a saving of $17 million in `compliance costs.’  The story doesn’t quite say this, but it’s certainly possible for intelligent people to read it that way. Some did.

On the other hand, the Treasury Regulatory Impact Statement estimates the changes will save about six lives over the next ten years. It’s possible that the Treasury is that badly wrong but if they are it would have been helpful to see details of how and why.

Everyone agrees that fencing swimming pools saves lives. I mean, not just the Government, the Treasury, and Water Safety New Zealand, but everyone, even the Freakonomics guys whose whole shtick is not agreeing with things.  The question is what the law changes  do to pool fencing.

To start with, these changes do repeal the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act 1987, but not in the sense of making the requirements go away. They’ve been relocated as amendments to the Buildings Act 2004, with details in the Building Code.

The plans are

• inspections reduced from three years to five years, but councils will be required to perform them (some now don’t inspect at all)
• spa pools allowed to have child-proof covers instead of fences
• putting fencing requirements in the building code, so compliance is more likely to happen automatically
• an infringement notice as first penalty for violating the code, rather than the theoretical ability to prosecute immediately.

Water Safety New Zealand has said in the past that they think spa-pool covers are effective; at that time they were concerned that the covers wouldn’t be inspected (as quoted by Treasury from public comments to the 2013 version of the proposal).

It looks like the main real concern is the reduction in inspections both for councils who current inspect every three years, and from the omission of spa pools.

Requiring councils to inspect spa pools would be expensive (they estimate $67 million more over ten years). Three-yearly instead of five-yearly required inspections of swimming pools is estimated to cost an extra $19 million over ten years.  Those, not $17 million for the whole package, are the relevant cost-benefit numbers, relative to how many lives you think would be saved.

I could see three-yearly inspections being worthwhile if the rate of, say, broken swimming-pool gates in otherwise compliant fencing was high enough. I’d be a bit more surprised for spa pools, but it’s not inconceivable.  The story doesn’t say anything that could help me make up my mind.

There are also areas where the government could have tightened up rules but didn’t. For example, the Regulatory Impact Statement considered the option of forcing existing pools to comply with some building code changes, but estimated the cost would be about $10 million per life saved.

You can find the various government documents here, and Water Safety NZ’s submission here.

The story is encouraging people to make public submissions on the Bill. As a general principle, this is a good idea. In New Zealand, public submissions on legislation are, at least sometimes,  taken seriously. The chances will presumably be higher if you’re relatively precise about what you think should be changed in the bill and why — it’s not an opinion poll, it’s crowd-sourced review and editing.