The owner of a paddleboarding company was jailed for 10-and-a-half-years for the gross negligence manslaughter of three trip participants and a guide, following their deaths on a SUP trip down the River Cleddau in Wales in 2021. She was sentenced in April 2025.
The company owner was one of two instructors on the excursion, which was planned to be a one-day SUP adventure down a slow-moving river.
Instead, heavy rains caused flood conditions, and the group of paddleboarders went over a low-head dam (weir), where participants became trapped in the recirculating current below, leading to the four drownings.
The incident is the UK’s worst-ever paddleboarding tragedy.
Lisa Rose, Specialist Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service Special Crime Division, said, “This was an avoidable tragedy…there was no safety briefing or formal risk assessments, and the participants were not advised that they would be traversing a weir, or instructed on options to get out of the water.”
The prosecutor also said the company owner “was not qualified to take inexperienced paddleboarders out in such conditions, and her actions fell very far below the standard expected of a paddleboard instructor and activity planner. The tour could have started at a different point, to avoid the weir, or been cancelled altogether, but [the owner] made the final decision to go ahead with the event. There are no words that can articulate the devastation this tragedy has caused, and I can only hope that this sentence provides a sense of justice for those affected.”
The judge read aloud her sentencing remarks, saying, “There had been no safety briefing beforehand…no consent forms had been obtained from any participant. You did not assess the level of the participants’ experience and abilities.”
The judge continued: “You did not tell them that there would be a weir, and you gave them no choice but to go over it, which inevitably caused this avoidable tragedy and loss of life.”
The judge ended her remarks, saying, “You may go downstairs and start your sentence.”
This is not the only recent adventure safety incident resulting in tragedy, jail, or both.
In January 2024, a challenge course facilitator was sentenced to six months in jail after a participant on the challenge course died after slipping off a high element. That incident led to the development of outdoor adventure safety standards for Singapore.
In February 2024, a zipline facilitator was sentenced to two months in jail after a nine-year-old participant fell four stories from the zipline, fracturing her pelvis, elbow and hip.
In June 2024, a summer camp program agreed to pay USD 15 million after a child drowned at a summer camp.
In October 2024, a Glasgow-based outdoor activity company, Outdoor Pursuits Scotland Ltd, pled guilty to a breach of health and safety legislation and was fined £10,000, after 12-year-old Kayden Walker became trapped on the upstream side of a weir and drowned, during a 2019 river boogie boarding trip on the River Tay.
