THE company in charge of Dunmow Leisure Centre has pleaded guilty to a health and safety breach which left a toddler in hospital with third-degree burns.

Befordshire-based Leisure Connection Ltd is being prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive over the incident on February 18 last year.

The two-and-a-half-year-old boy was walking through the changing area with his father when he slipped near a drain which had just been cleaned.

He suffered burns from a sodium hydroxide cleaning solution and had to have full skin grafts to his buttocks and the back of his right thigh.

The toddler spent ten nights in hospital and has been left with scarring.

Today (Friday) the company pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court to breaching a general duty of care by exposing visitors to a risk of corrosive burns from a drain cleaner.

Now it must wait to hear its fate. Sentencing was adjourned by Judge David Turner QC but no date has yet been fixed for when it will take place.

The mid-morning incident happened when the pool was only open to families with children.

At an earlier hearing Chelmsford magistrates, ordered that the child’s identity should not be published.

Leisure Connection Ltd, which was formed in March 2010, specialises in leisure management. It holds 22 nationwide contracts for 60 sites, of which 47 are local authority sites.

It is understood the family are pursuing a separate civil claim against the company.