Ceiling falls during Shrewsbury's Quarry Pool gala

Young swimmers had a narrow escape after part of the ceiling cladding at Shrewsbury's Quarry pool fell during a gala.

More than 100 young swimmers, aged between nine and 17, had gathered at the pool for the sixth Shrewsbury Spring Open competition.

But there was drama when a piece of the strip metal cladding fell into the warm-up area of the main pool and another was left hanging from the ceiling on Saturday.

Staff allowed the gala, which had been organised by Shrewsbury Swimming Club, to go ahead after cordoning off the affected area.

The piece of metal that fell narrowly missed swimmers in the warm-up area but nobody was hurt in the incident.

Duty manager Lewis Redmond said at the weekend that it was unclear how the accident had occurred.

He said he had been alerted to what had happened by Danny Malcolm, an official from the Shrewsbury Swimming Club.

"I have no idea how it happened. I was downstairs and Danny from the swimming club ran out on to the landing to say part of the ceiling had collapsed," he said.

Investigations are now taking place in an attempt to discover what caused the incident.

The area was sectioned off while checks were made on the CCTV into how the incident had occurred.

Neither Mr Redmond or Shrewsbury head coach Danny Malcolm could remember anything like this happening before.

Mr Malcolm said: "I've got no idea how it happened. All I know is I heard a crash. We cordoned off the area so the gala could continue."

A boom had been placed across the 33m pool to form a 25m competition pool and shallow warm-up pool, around which the swimmers were being marshalled before their races.

Swimmers were moved to the opposite side of the pool and spectators were cleared from the seating near the affected area while the busy programme of races went ahead as scheduled.