Yorkshire fire service issues warning after children spotted playing on frozen water

Last month, four boys aged under 11 died when they fell into a lake at a nature reserve in Solihull, West Midlands, while playing on ice. That led to a number of warnings to parents and children about the dangers of playing on frozen lakes, ponds and canals.

But the advice appears not to have been heeded by some people in South Yorkshire, after the fire service was called out to an incident in Chapeltown on Sunday (Jan 22).

A statement from the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said: “It's pretty icy out there. Sadly, our crews have just come away from an incident in Chapeltown, and a group of young people were spotted playing on a frozen body of water.

"We've said it before and we'll say it again - please stay off the ice! You never know how thick it might be, and if you fall in, you could get into serious difficulty.”

Last month, in the wake of the tragedy at Solihull, the service was called to help children seen on a pond on farmland off Marsh Lane in the village of Arksey, north of Doncaster.

And in North Yorkshire, children were also seeing playing on the frozen lake at Rowntree Park in York – with North Yorkshire Police saying the four boys had smashed the ice with their scooters.