A CORONER will ask the government to make child-safety barriers around swimming pools a legal requirement after three-year-old Jack Rowe drowned at his home in Upavon.

Jack, of Grey Flags on Pewsey Road, Upavon, died at 2.10am on Thursday, July 10 – having been found at the bottom of the family swimming pool at around 7pm the previous evening.

The toddler, who was celebrating his birthday, was being looked after by his half brother, Harry, 20, while Jack’s mum, Olivia took her daughter Ella and her friend to a disco at St Francis School in Pewsey at around 6pm.

The pair were in the breakfast room of the family home and Jack was watching a Peppa Pig DVD when Harry told him he was going to the toilet.

Harry was gone for around four minutes but when he returned he could not see Jack. He spent 15 minutes looking for him before calling Mrs Rowe who was with some other school mums in the Waterfront pub having an end of term get together.

At an inquest into his death at Salisbury Coroner's Court today, the court heard how a party had been thrown for Jack to celebrate his birthday on the Sunday before his death and one of his friends had been beating the pool water with a toy broom.

Mrs Rowe, 39, said: “Jack wasn’t really playing with him, he was playing with another friend, mostly on the trampoline but he must have seen him doing it at some point.

“He was very outgoing, confident, very active and kind.

“He loved baths and swimming in baths but the pool, like me he thought it was too cold so kicking his feet [in the pool] was enough for him.”

After receiving Harry’s call, Mrs Rowe she returned home just before 7pm and searched the house and outbuildings and then called the police before heading into Upavon because Jack had tried to run off into the village by himself some months before.

She also checked the pool from the breakfast room.

Mrs Rowe said: “I went outside to check it as well but in my naivety I assumed that if he drowned he’d float so I didn’t see anything in the pool so I went straight out to the main road. ”

Jack was discovered by Caroline Dale who knew the family because her daughter also goes to St Francis School and had joined the search party.

When she first looked at the pool from the house she could not see Jack but decided to go out to the pool to take a closer look and initially felt relief because she couldn’t see anything.

She then saw a figure at the bottom of the pool which she believed to be Jack but because his clothes were a similar colour to the tiles in the pool it made it difficult to see him.

Ms Dale jumped into the water to get him out and when she returned to the surface Harry was at the side of the pool.

In a statement read by the coroner she said: “I remember Harry saying ‘No Jack, he never goes by the water’.”

Harry helped to lift Jack out of the pool and started CPR on him with the help of a family friend.

Jack was airlifted to Southampton Hospital by the Wiltshire Air Ambulance but died of multiple organ failure bronchial pneumonia following a cardiac arrest and being emerged in water.

Wiltshire and Swindon assistant coroner Claire Balysz ruled a verdict of accidental death. She will be writing to Edward Timpson, Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Children and Families.

She said: “There is really very little doubt in my mind as to what happened.

“I think that Jack was an adventurous little boy, I think his DVD had finished and he decided just to take himself off.

“I think he fell into the swimming pool, where he was trying to reach the toy or play with the toy I’m not sure.

“I think there will be an awful lot of parents that will be thinking ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ because children do run the whole time and it’s a very unfortunate and tragic accident.”