Girl, 2, dies in holiday pool

A two-year-old British girl has drowned in the swimming pool of a rented villa in France as her parents prepared to come home.

While Matthew and Fiona Shires loaded suitcases into the family car, their daughter Lily wandered through an open gate in the safety fence around the pool. She is believed to have slipped and fallen unnoticed into the 4ft-deep water. It was several minutes before the couple from Clapham discovered her in the pool. They rushed Lily to a doctor in a neighbouring village but he was unable to revive her.

It was the last day of the family's two-week holiday in the French village of Saint-Martial-Viveyrol in the Dordogne.

A French police spokesman said: "The parents are utterly devastated by this dreadful accident." He added: "We cannot stress strongly enough the need for anyone looking after children to survey them at all times when there is access to a swimming pool."

The couple have now returned to London with their daughter's body.

Lily's death is the latest in a series of drowning tragedies involving children this summer.

A week ago, five-year-old Callum Grant slipped away while his parents barbecued in the garden of their home in Bournemouth. His absence was quickly noticed but, by the time he was found in the family's new pool, he had drowned.

Three days earlier, seven-year-old Benjamin Waters drowned in a swimming pool in Tenerife only an hour into his summer holiday. He had gone for a swim with his older brother as his parents, from Wearside, unpacked at the resort of Playa de Las Americas.

At the same time 17-year-old Alex Foulkes drowned on a trek in the Italian Alps with a school party. The pupil from Harrogate Grammar School is thought to have slipped into a river near Val d'Aosta. The water was in full flood after snow in the mountains had been melted in a heatwave.

Earlier this month, Birmingham coroner Victor Round said he was compiling a report for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Royal Lifesaving Society on the dangers of garden ponds and swimming pools.

He said: "We ought to think about fencing our garden ponds and water features of any kind."