RLSS UK royal lifesaving association

A little history of the RLSS UK and what the RLSS UK aim to achieve

The Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS UK) is the drowning prevention charity and the UK’s leading provider of water safety and drowning prevention education.

Around 400 people needlessly die from drowning in the UK every year and thousands more suffer injury, some life-changing, through near-drowning experiences. Putting these figures into context one person dies every 20 hours in the UK and drowning is the third highest cause of accidental death of children in the UK. Add to this the fact that around 75 UK citizens drown in foreign waters every year – we have a huge challenge facing us to help save lives and reduce the number of UK citizens drowning.

Here at the RLSS UK we have an impressive heritage. We have built up years of experience and we are proud to boast a strong force of loyal members and volunteers who work with us to promote water safety and educate in life saving skills. Our roots were established back in 1891 as the ‘Life Saving Society’, and in the early 1900s, with support from the Royal family, we were granted permission to adopt the ‘Royal’ to our title – a badge that we are still immensely proud of today.

We have used our extensive knowledge of water safety and training to develop a comprehensive range of vocational qualifications and a series of awards and programmes which have the ultimate aim of preventing drowning and stopping unnecessary loss of life – including the National Pool Lifeguard Qualification, the premier lifeguard training programme.

Our core purpose is to ‘prevent drowning’ and our value proposition is to ‘deliver a year on year reduction in the rate of British and Irish citizens drowning’ through the identification of seven challenging ambitions we intend to focus our attentions on having the maximum impact possible on these facets of the work we undertake.

View the RLSS UK Business Plan

Our Ambitions

To achieve a 30% increase in the people engaged and involved in Lifesaving activity to build safer communities.

To be a world leader in lifeguarding and lifesaving qualifications.

Be the ‘go to’ organisation for Drowning Prevention advice and comment.

Deliver drowning prevention education to all under 18 year olds in the UK.

To be one of the top 8 countries in world Lifesaving Sport.

Service a diverse range of new sectors by applying a flexible approach to meet market demands.

Leverage UK and Ireland Lifesaving knowledge and resource to actively influence the reduction of global drownings.