A LANDOWNER has pleaded guilty to two offences after a four-year-old tragically drowned.

Luca Hurle died after getting into difficulty at Old Park Wood caravan park, near Grange.

The trial of Andrew Newbold and Newmac Limited, as well as the sentencing of Holker Estates, is due to take place across two weeks beginning on May 10, 2021.

Holker Estates, which owns the caravan park and is registered at Cavendish House, Kirkby-in-Furness, pleaded guilty to two counts against it: failing to conduct an undertaking in such a way to ensure that persons not in your employment were not exposed to risks to their health and safety; and failing to comply with an improvement notice.

It pleaded not guilty to: being an employer, failing to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of persons not in your employment; and being an employer, failing to make and give effect to such arrangements as were appropriate for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures.

A spokeswoman for Preston Crown Court said Holker Estates would next appear in court when it was sentenced at the conclusion of next year’s trial.

Andrew Newbold, of Killington Hall, near Kirkby Lonsdale, director of health and safety firm Newmac, pleaded not guilty to: failing under the terms of its contract with Holker Estates to conduct its undertaking in such a way as to ensure that persons not in its employment were not exposed to risks to their health or safety in using the client’s swimming pools.

Newmac Limited pleaded not guilty to: being a self-employed person who conducted an undertaking of a prescribed description, failed to conduct your undertaking in such a way to ensure that you and other persons (not being your employees) were not exposed to risks to their health and safety.

Luca, from Newport, Wales, got into difficulty in an indoor heated swimming pool in August 2016.

Emergency services were called and the boy was taken to Furness General Hospital, Barrow, then Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool. A coroner ruled he died of drowning and a hypoxic brain injury. 

The prosecution is being led by South Lakeland District Council.