An accountant from Leicestershire has died while undertaking a 21-mile charity swim across the English Channel.

Susan Taylor, who worked for Nuneaton firm Stewart, Fletcher and Barrett and was also an accountant for Hinckley United football club, was raising money for the Rainbows Children's Hospice, in Loughborough, and Diabetes UK.

The 34-year-old, collapsed suddenly in the water during her swim on Sunday when she was within sight of land off the northern coast of France. The support team on board, which included her husband and her brother who is a paramedic, radioed asking for a defibrillator and she was then taken by naval helicopter to a hospital in nearby Boulogne-sur-Mer, where she was later pronounced dead.

Taylor, from Barwell, had taken temporary leave to train for the challenge of swimming from England to France and created the 'Create the Ripple Channel Swim' website so people could follow her training and journey. Donations to charity have now topped the £50,000 mark and include £1000 from the comedian David Walliams who swam the Channel in 2006 to raise funds for Comic Relief.