Two grandparents holding councils to account on residential swimming pool inspections have given Invercargill City Council an E*. 

Keith Marshall and Louise Buchanan rated councils across the country in a school report style, ranging from a fully-compliant 'A' to 'F', where the council couldn't offer any information. 

Invercargill's council (ICC) received it's own special rating of E*.

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Councils are by law responsible for checking every three years that residential swimming pools have suitable fencing around them, to stop young children from falling in and drowning.

An 'E' grade showed a council's performance was 'poor', completing between 5% and 20% of the inspections, whereas a 'D' grade represented a 'half-hearted attempt', completing 20-50%.

The couple's research, which involved sending councils a list of questions about residential swimming pool numbers, inspections and dates, found Invercargill was originally at an E grade, but had improved to a D by the time of the report's publication, and will be at a B by the end of the year, hence the special grade. 

A 'B' is 'oh so close, within a whisker of fully compliant - 95%. 

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ICC building and planning services manager Jonathan Shaw acknowledged progress with implementing the 2017 changes to the Building Act regarding the fencing of swimming pools has been slower than desirable.

"This is partly attributable to a lack of staff available to carry out inspections which has been addressed with the creation of a dedicated Compliance Officer role introduced in 2020, unfortunately due to a lack of suitable applicants the role wasn’t filled until May of this year," he said.

In 2020 the ICC underwent an assessment with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) regarding its functions as a Territorial Authority which identified a need for progress in the area of swimming pool inspections.

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ICC is actively working with MBIE to address these issues.

"We aim to expedite the number of inspections carried out over the coming year in order to inspect all pool fences in our territory," Shaw said.

There are 147 residential swimming pools and spas in Invercargill. 

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Marshall is a former council chief executive and chair of the Safeguarding Children Initiative Trust, and Buchanan is a former senior organisational development manager from the corporate sector. 

They were motivated to conduct the research by "a rather unpleasant pool-related dispute" with Tasman District Council over the inspection of their own pool. They decided to get a national picture and used the LGOIMA (Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act) legislation, the local government equivalent of a Official Information Act request, to get the data. 

They found just over half of local councils were meeting their residential swimming pool inspection legal obligations.