A coroner has called for an official review of the rules governing canoe hire on rivers after a nine-year-old girl drowned in fast flowing rapids.
Powys coroner Mr Peter Maddox recorded a verdict of misadventure at an inquest into the death of Billie Clayton, after a three-day inquest in Welshpool. Billie died on the River Wye near Glasbury when a canoeing trip with her twin brother Edward and father Ian turned into tragedy on April 12, 2006.
The canoe overturned in river rapids, pitching all three into the water.
Billie’s father, a TV presenter for ITV in Yorkshire, was able to rescue her brother Edward, who had clung on to an uprooted tree.
But his efforts to find Billie were fruitless and she was not found until later. She was pronounced dead at Hereford General Hospital.
Mr Clayton, 48, of Featherstone, West Yorkshire, told the inquest in Welshpool he had gone on to a “wrong part of the river”, and when he tried to correct his course, they came on to “a fast-flowing part”.
He said: “We were taken by it. We hit something which I thought was a fallen tree and the canoe tipped over.” He reached under the canoe and “thought I’d got them”, but then realised he had found only Edward, who was then washed out of his arms but was able to grab branches of a fallen tree.
Mr Clayton said he was unable to find Billie, despite returning to the water after bringing Edward to the river bank. “I don’t know whether I made the right decision,” he said. “In the end, I went for the one I could see.”
He said Billie had been “a delight”, and that the family had “lived a lovely life together”. She had been an “athletic girl”, he said, and a “great worker”.
He said: “Getting over this is not a linear process. Sometimes I think of who she was and it restores me; sometimes I look at what Heather, my partner, Edward and I are doing now and there’s no restoration.”
Hay-on-Wye retained firefighter Richard Wildee told the inquest he was part of a team which launched a rescue boat to search for Billie. She was found after a colleague found a buoyancy aid after seeing a submerged paddle near bushes on the bank.
Marcus Bailie, of the Adventure Activities Licensing Service, said canoe hire was exempt from licensing “if there is no leadership of the activity involved – meaning instruction”.
He said: “The other principle exemption is if a young person is accompanied by their parent. The only stipulation is that the equipment has to be fit for purpose, and in this case it was in good condition.”
Recording his verdict, coroner Mr Maddox vowed to write to the Adventure Activities Licensing Service and the Health and Safety Executive, suggesting a full review of the rules governing canoe hire. He issued a seven-page summary of the evidence and his findings, with an 11-point list of facts for use by a future review body.