Ponteland Dad calls on cities to follow Durham on water safety

The dad of a Ponteland student, who drowned in a Manchester canal, says cities should be looking to Durham when it comes to water safety.

Nick Pope's 20-year-old son, Charlie, went missing on a night out in Manchester last week.

His body was found on Friday evening.

Nick has said more needs to be done to keep people safe when it comes to cities' waterways, and has pointed to Durham as an example of how things should be.

Nick said:

“It’s got to stop and there’s things you can do, there’s things that can be done with barriers and warnings and lights…I mean after three deaths in Durham they started taking this seriously…and they’ve now got wardens in the streets, students who stay sober to help kids get home. They have a thing called a drunk tank where they park them in there if they’re wandering around and they’re not in good shape.

“We set up a hashtag for him-make Charlie the last…and he’s got to be the last and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be the last. You know Durham have done some fantastic things, they’ve taken it seriously and if Manchester need to come to Durham to see what they’re doing to find out best practice then they should be doing that. They have a duty of care to their people.”

Following three student drownings in Durham, the city began breathalysing students going into clubs and put more safety stewards on the streets.

Kevin Lough, Chair of the Durham Open Water Safety Group, said:

"A wide range of initiatives and safety schemes are the most effective ways of reducing the risks, which, unfortunately, will never realistically be totally eradicated - but it can be reduced significantly and controlled.

"What we’re not here is to be party poopers and preventing people having fun- but we have, in the background, done some very subtle but effective initiatives and schemes to make people safer than they already are.”

A petition, calling for safety measures to be put in place where Charlie died, can be found here.