The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)
Designated bathing waters are coastal or inland waters that are used by large numbers of bathers and have facilities to promote and support bathing as set out in the Bathing Water Regulations 2013. They are an important public amenity and can be valuable assets for local communities.
Following an application round and a period of public consultation, we are today announcing the designation of 27 new bathing waters—12 rivers, six estuarine sites, five coastal sites and four lakes—taking the total number in England to 451, the highest ever. Despite new stricter standards for bathing water classifications being introduced in 2015, last year 90% of bathing waters were classified as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’—up from 76% in 2010.
Designating a site as a bathing water means the site will benefit from a new programme of bathing water quality monitoring by the Environment Agency, with a focus on working with partners collaboratively to identify any pollution sources and to put in place actions to address these issues. This can bring social, economic, leisure and health benefits.
We are continually working to improve and modernise the bathing waters system. That is why I am also today announcing that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs plans to consult on a series of potential reforms for England to the Bathing Water Regulations 2013. The proposed changes will drive work to improve bathing water quality, enhance monitoring, and enable more flexibility around the dates of the bathing water monitoring season—the current bathing water monitoring offer will be maintained as a minimum. These changes will allow us to increase monitoring outside of the bathing water season in the future, to better embed water quality improvements within processes and to prevent automatic de-designation of existing bathing water sites.
DEFRA will also seek public and stakeholder views on extending the definition of ‘bathers’ to include a wider range of water users in addition to swimmers, such as rowers, kayakers and paddle boarders, and on allowing multiple monitoring points, instead of a single monitoring point, at each bathing water site.
Full details of the proposed reforms will be available for consideration in due course, as part of the consultation process. The consultation will be open to submissions over the summer, with the Government response to follow later in the year.
Alongside these reforms, the Government remain committed to improving water quality through the Plan for Water, our comprehensive strategy which sets out how we will deliver clean and plentiful water for people, businesses and nature through more investment, tighter regulation and more effective enforcement. As part of this, we have set stringent targets for water companies to reduce the use of storm overflows through the storm overflows discharge reduction plan, which is driving the largest infrastructure programme in water company history—£60 billion over 25 years. This includes front-loading action in particularly important and sensitive sites, including bathing waters; by 2035, water companies will have improved all storm overflows discharging near every designated bathing water.
We will consider all responses to the consultation and use them to inform our ambitions to reform and improve the framework for managing bathing waters in England. The next bathing water application round in England will commence in spring 2025.
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