Drowning Prevention Week, the flagship national campaign run by Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS UK), helps pool operators throughout the UK and overseas attract new customers while increasing awareness of important water safety messaging to help save lives. 

RLSS UK Drowning Prevention Week has proven to help leisure operators engage with the wider community and meet their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) objectives. Each year, RLSS UK supports leisure operators in making the most of this campaign period by providing free resources that help drive new audiences to leisure facilities and increase revenue.  

Here are various ways to get involved with Drowning Prevention Week to help promote important water safety messaging, encourage the community to visit your leisure facilities, and sign up for your commercial activities and programmes. 

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1) Download the Latest RLSS UK Drowning Prevention Week Resources and Create Activity Areas

Every year, new resources are added or updated to the Drowning Prevention Week resource library. These resources make it easy for you to share important water safety messages within your display areas and/or create places where children and families can participate in land-based activities and learn about water safety in a fun way. 

The FREE Drowning Prevention Week resources include the following items, and new resources are added each year: 

• Supporter logos to promote your involvement 
• Posters and digital screen campaign information 
• Social media graphics 
• Printable colouring sheets
• Printable certificates
• Printable stickers 
• Printable posters
• Water safety code animation video
• Printable selfie frames 

Download the 2026 Resources 

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2) Promote your Support and Share Important Water Safety Information

If you have a swimming pool or water-based facilities, you are responsible for helping to educate your customers about water safety and preventing drownings and accidents from happening. By participating in RLSS UK Drowning Prevention Week, you can show that you are practising Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and meeting your CSR objectives.  

Sharing that you are supporting and participating in Drowning Prevention Week also makes your customers aware of your commitment to water safety in your community. This helps them feel safe at your facilities and may encourage them to visit regularly. 

The Drowning Prevention Week resources include a variety of social media graphics and website banners to help you share your involvement (please always ensure you tag us @RLSSUK). They have key water safety messages for your communication displays, social media channels, website banners and pages, email bulletin/newsletter, etc. 

Download the 2026 Supporters Pack 

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3) Incorporate Water Safety into your Swimming Lessons or Family Pool Sessions 

As part of Drowning Prevention Week, RLSS UK creates and provides pre-planned water safety lesson plans that your swimming teachers can use and helpful water safety flash cards. The lesson plans include fun, water-safety-focused sessions to help children learn essential water safety skills as part of their usual swimming session or as a special full-length session—the choice is yours.

Download the 2026 Resources 

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4) Run Discounts and Offers for Swimming Lessons and Other Water Safety Programmes (e.g. Rookie Lifeguard) 

RLSS UK Drowning Prevention Week is a perfect time to promote your RLSS UK Rookie Lifeguard programme, RLSS UK National Lifesaving Academy (NLA) sessions, swimming lesson programmes, etc. 

Why not offer reduced-cost taster sessions or a ‘bring a friend’ initiative during the week to promote water safety and provide a taster of what the full programme offers? You could encourage new sign-ups by offering a limited-time discount/offer just for those who sign up during Drowning Prevention Week (e.g. one session free or free swim cap, etc). 

Check out our How to Recruit New Rookie Lifeguards and Fill Your Sessions guide. 

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5) Host Special Land-Based or Water-Based Taster Sessions or Events

Parents and carers are always looking for fun activities with their children, so why not offer special activities or events that they can participate in at your leisure facilities? You could also provide these at local schools or other local community spaces. Depending on your available facilities and staffing, these events or sessions could be free, ticketed or a mix of both. 

Some examples include: 

• Water safety scavenger hunt - Create water safety stations where children can learn a water safety skill at each station and then receive a stamp/sticker. If they collect all the stamps/stickers within a set period (e.g. a day or a week), they can trade them in for a reward (e.g. a water safety certificate, a free drink/snack, etc). 
• RLSS UK Rookie Lifeguard and RLSS UK National Lifesaving Academy (NLA) taster session(s) - Depending on the facilities available, the taster could be given in a pool environment or tailored to offer a land-based skills taster session instead of using rescue tubes, basic signals, etc. It’s a great idea to leave leaflets for the children to take home to their parents, including a QR code that links to your programme’s sign-up form so they can easily join your programme and sessions.   
• RLSS UK Save a Life Series Workshop(s) – These one-hour, friendly and informal workshops teach members of the community the essential skills to save a life, including CPR and treatment for choking. Why not go on to promote your full first aid courses after these events for participants who want to learn more CPR and first aid skills? Find out more about the RLSS UK Save a Life Series. 
  
  

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6) Run Competitions and/or Fundraising Events

Competitions and events attract the attention of families, highlight shared safety values, and can also attract the attention of the local press. 

If your area has a fire and rescue service, ambulance service, lifeboat station or mountain rescue service, why not collaborate to develop a joint water safety demonstration day or participate in their event days? Don’t forget to hand out lots of leaflets about your commercial services and programmes, and you could even offer an event-day sign-up discount or special offer.  

Examples of water safety-related events or competitions you can run: 

• CPRathon – how long can you perform CPR? 
• Towathon – tow a friend while completing as many lengths as possible 
• Swim-a-thons – get sponsored to complete a set number of lengths within a set time. 
• Water safety-related quiz sheet. 
• Water safety-related colouring competition
• Water safety-themed pool party. 
• Sponsor a lifeguard – raise awareness of the water safety procedures you already have in place and the continuous training your lifeguards undertake. 
  
  

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Tell us how you're participating in RLSS UK Drowning Prevention Week this year:

We’ve created a webpage to advertise your leisure centre's involvement which we'll be sharing on social media, and we’d like to ensure that you are included.

If you haven’t already, please complete this short form to provide us with the details of how you’re participating in Drowning Prevention Week and we’ll add you to the webpage so that the public are aware of how your participating this year.

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To learn more and get involved with RLSS UK Drowning Prevention Week this year, please use the following links: 

Access the FREE Drowning Prevention Week Resources

Learn more about Drowning Prevention Week