Asked by: Chris Webb (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many visitors accessed the Environment Agency’s Swimfo bathing water quality information platform in each of the last three years; and what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of public engagement with that service.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) has provided the following figures for use of their Swimfo website in the previous three calendar years.
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
Views (number of times the website has been accessed) | 402,624 | 830,637 | 1,635,221 |
Users (number of people accessing the website) | 93,920 | 193,243 | 308,567 |
There has been a significant increase in the public’s engagement with the EA’s Swimfo website over the last three years, totalling almost 2.9 million views over that period. In 2022, there were 402,624 views from 93,920 users. In 2023, the website was viewed 830,637 times by 193,243 users. In 2024 these figures increased to 1,635,221 views with 308,567 users. These figures were collected from users who allow cookies, which indicates that usage is expected to be significantly higher than the numbers suggest. The Environment Agency has begun a programme of work to redevelop the Swimfo website over the next few years to improve the provision of information to the public.
Asked by: Chris Webb (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment his Department has made of levels of public awareness of where to find bathing water quality test results; and whether it plans to improve the (a) visibility and (b) accessibility of this information at bathing sites and online.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) recently commissioned research on behaviours and attitudes of people involved in water activities and included a question on where people accessed information. This revealed that the most popular sources were signs at beaches, the EA’s Swimfo website and Gov.UK online.
The EA is committed to improving the provision of bathing water information to the public and has used the research findings to inform re-development of its Swimfo website which will be delivered over the next few years. The project is currently at its scoping stage and aims to modernise Swimfo and to provide bathers with targeted information on bathing water quality. There are no plans to change beach signage at this stage.