According to the latest statistics, the number of children drowning in the bath increased from four in 2019-2020 to 12 in 2021-2022. Seven of these deaths were of babies under the age of five, and in five cases, baths seats were being used.
In the majority of cases (82 per cent), the child had been left alone in the bath. The most common reasons for doing so were to take a phone call, leave the room to get something like a towel, confusion about who was supervising the child or attending to a sibling or other young children.
The data released today comes from the University of Bristol's National Child Mortality Database (NCMD).
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