Seventeen people are now believed to have died in water-related incidents in recent days - appallingly, most of them are children.

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In May, we learned police had recovered a body in the search for 11-year-old Mackenzie Swift, who went missing from a river in South Yorkshire.

The deadliness of the heat spell has sparked warnings about the dangers of open-water swimming and the risk of cold-water shock.

But the young age of so many victims also points to a crisis which has been slowly building over the last 15 years - the gradual disappearance of many of the country’s public swimming pools.

More than 500 public pools have closed since 2010, thanks to a combination of crippling energy costs and squeezed council budgets.

The decline has........

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