A new plan is to be created to reduce the tragic toll of drownings in canals, rivers and other open water across Greater Manchester.

It comes as figures reveal that more people in the city-region died because of drowning than of fire last year.

In 2021, 15 people died by drowning, while 11 died because of fires.

Over the last five years, a total of 66 people drowned in Greater Manchester’s waterways.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service brought together organisations and campaigners for the first Greater Manchester Water Safety Summit on Friday.

The summit aims to create a new Greater Manchester Water Safety Partnership and a new strategy for Greater Manchester.

Organisations are set to work together across the whole of Greater Manchester.

The summit was attended by local councils, Greater Manchester Police and safety organisations the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Royal Lifesaving Society.

Water safety campaigner Nick Pope, whose son Charlie died aged 19 in a central Manchester canal in March 2018, urged people at the summit to do more to prevent a repeat of the tragedies suffered by his family and others.

Major landowners who are responsible for water safety in places where people have died were also there.

They include the Canal and River Trust, Peel Holdings, which manages water at Salford Quays, and United Utilities, which manages local reservoirs.

The summit is part of the fire service’s work to promote community safety and prevent deaths and injuries.

Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue’s head of prevention, Billy Fenwick, said: “It’s sobering to think that more people died of drowning last year than as a result of a fire – so we all must do more to reduce that terrible toll of death and heartache.

“There are measures we can take, working together in a partnership, that will make a difference.

“It’s important to work together at a Greater Manchester level so we can learn from each other what works.

“We believe this is the first time a water safety partnership has been created over such a large area. This summit is the start of our work to identify the most effective measures we can take.”

The canals and rivers in central Manchester and Salford have had the highest number of incidents in Greater Manchester, followed by the canal and river Douglas in central Wigan.