“THIS was an accident that shouldn’t have happened” – those were the words of a judge as he fined a company for failures which led to the death of a teenage girl.

Kajil Devi drowned at Cotswold Country Park and Beach aged 15 in July 2010.

Cotswold District Council (CDC) prosecuted WM Active Ltd, which operates the beach, for health and safety breaches and on Friday the company was ordered to pay a total of £240,000 in fines and costs at Gloucester Crown Court.

WM Active, a sister company of Cotswold Water Park-based property developers Watermark, admitted that it had inexperienced and untrained lifeguards on duty when Kajil died.

It also agreed that at the time of her death there was no plan in place for dealing with emergencies, and admitted other health and safety failures.

Kajil, from Feltham in west London, could not swim and drowned as she was playing in the water at the beach near Somerford Keynes.

She slipped while pushing an inflatable dingy with her young cousins inside. Neither the lifeguards nor her family spotted her struggling.

When they noticed she was missing, a search ensued and her body was pulled from the water 20 minutes later.

Sentencing WM Active on Friday, Judge William Hart said: “The problem was that there was no restriction on visitor numbers. One either had to have the right number of life guards or restrict the numbers so they could be safely guarded.

“This set of circumstances was not an isolated failure but a systemic one.

“The death of this young girl was tragic. The inquest concluded that it was a case of accidental death.

“No one from the beach was watching, no one saw what happened and no one came to save her. This was an accident that shouldn’t have happened.”

The two teenage lifeguards on duty when Kajil died, a boy aged 16 and a girl aged 18, had only recently been appointed.

Bernard Thorogood, prosecuting, told the court the girl had been hired after emailing the company and asking if there were any jobs available.

He said that the company replied by offering her a job via email without inviting her to an interview or asking for proof of her lifeguard qualifications.

Mr Thorogood said that no blame should be put on the lifeguards for the death of Kajil, and they should be praised for their actions in trying to save her.

The court also heard that the buoy line in the bathers area of the water at the beach was further out than the two metre limit when the teenager died, and was moved to the correct position after her death.

Adrian Darbishire QC, representing WM Active, admitted that the company had failed to adequately train staff responsible for health and safety and lifeguards.

He said: “It had responsibility for health and safety and it failed in that way. They feel sorrow to the family that they suffered such a terrible loss due to that lack of appreciation.”

WM Active’s sole shareholder, Watermark chief Max Thomas, handed the Standard a statement from the company outside the court following the sentencing, which said it had learned lessons from Kajil’s death.

It added that the company had co-operated will all investigations and questioned why CDC had seen fit to spend in excess of £200,000 on legal fees pursuing the company, when the coroner had ruled that the death was an accident.

However CDC disagreed.

A spokesman said: “It was not only morally correct but also in the interests of the wider public – and in particular the users of the water park – for the council to prosecute WM Active.

“The council disagrees with WM Active’s assertion that they have co-operated fully with all agencies during the whole investigation process.

“In fact, the council’s legal representative actually stated publicly that there had been a complete absence of acceptance of guilt by the defendants until July 2014. There is no doubt that this intransigence on the part of WM Active lengthened the whole legal process.”