IN TROUBLED times it’s sink or swim – and Victoria Pettitt is powering her way through troubled waters.

Victoria is co-managing director with her husband, Adrian, of the Splish Splosh Swimming Pool, which is seeking the Small Business of the Year title, while Victoria has been nominated by Adrian for the Women In Enterprise Award.

It began as a one-off, operating from a single location in The Mount School, York for two hours a week – Victoria taught in the pool and Adrian took registers and ran the tuck shop. They saw it as a relaxing aside from their stressful IT jobs.

Today, the business, based at The Hackings in The Menagerie in Skipwith Road, Escrick, and employing seven people, serves nearly 1,500 customers operating at more than 45 locations across the UK and delivering more than 150 hours of swimming lessons per week.

For Victoria, it meant, of course, giving up her IT professional role on the NHS’s Connecting for Health programme in 2007 while her husband had to give up his full-time job as an IT manager.

Victoria’s enthusiasm is fuelled by her own near-disaster as a five-year-old in the deep end of a swimming pool while holidaying with her grandparents in Tenerife.

After they rescued her from drowning, they insisted she took swimming lessons before they took her on holiday again and doing the same for other people’s children has now become her mission.

Splish Splosh is rapidly building a name for providing quality lessons and customer service. This has triggered successful partnerships with big names in the hotel and fitness centre industry, including Q Hotels, Ramada Jarvis Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Best Western, Esporta Fitness Centres and Greens Health and Fitness Centres.