A worried mum fears for the safety of children at a newly-opened paddling pool complex after her disabled son suffered appalling injuries while playing in the water.

Jeanette Collins took her eight-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy, and his sisters to the new pools and hub building in Cassiobury Park last week.

He had only been floating and swimming in the shallow water for 10 minutes when his mother took him out because he had become “extremely distressed”, and found he had badly scraped his knees on the coarse pool bottom.

“I think parents need to be pre-warned of how rough and potentially dangerous the pools are,” she said.

“I do not believe that my son is the only child to have been hurt, and am worried that other young children will be injured, especially coming up to the school holidays.”

Having made an official complaint to Watford Borough Council, she added: “We will not be able to use the pools after this incident as they are not safe.

“The pools are supposedly accessible to all but not to disabled children who cannot walk or run around the pools. This is one activity my son really enjoys and can do independently with very little support.”

Another sunseeker injured herself near the pools after falling down a camouflaged step, which she described as a “trip hazard”.

Philippa Mays, 40, a financial administrator from Rickmansworth, visited on Saturday to enjoy an afternoon in the summer sun.

She was walking across from the café area when she tripped down the unmarked step – coloured the same as the level beneath it – and toppled over.

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“I didn’t see the drop at all. I carried on walking and the ground just went from underneath me,” she said. 

“I can imagine with so many people running and rushing, if someone goes flying they are going to be really quite hurt.”

Mrs Mays sustained bruising and scrapes to her arms and legs in the fall. Afterwards she spoke to two other women who both said they had tripped up the same step.

“It’s a new facility that they’ve spent millions on and this has already happened to three people within a week,” she added.

“There’s nothing there painted or in the markings to show people there’s a step. It’s all the same sandy colour so you don’t notice it.

“You would think that a new park is going to think about safety. I didn’t think the facility met the expectations that the council had put out.”

Mrs Mays says the problem could be solved with a simple line, painted in a different colour, to differentiate between the two levels. She has already spoken with Watford Borough Council to raise the issue.  

The £2.8 million pools and hub building were only opened the weekend before but have already suffered from a number of teething problems, including broken and faulty fixtures. The pools opened half an hour late on Tuesday because of problems with the plumbing.

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Watford Borough Council said in a statement: “The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents conducted a full report before our paddling pools were opened to the public and confirmed that they are safe.

“We will continue to monitor our paddling pools to ensure they remain safe well into the future.”