England recently saw the creation of 27 new 'designated bathing areas', 15 of which are on rivers.
This is a signficant increase to the number of riverside bathing areas, out of the new total of 451, most of which are beaches (Britain being a relatively small island this does make sense!).
Designating a stretch of coastline or river as a designated bathing area simply means the area is deemed relatively safe to swim in from a geographical point of view, but also that regular water quality monitoring will take place, conducted by the Environment Agency.
Quality is mostly sufficient..!
To date most of the mostly coastal swimming areas have been designated at good or excellent, with only 4.3% being designated poor.
There are four quality levels ranging from excellent - good - sufficient - to poor.
And the overall stats for 2023 stood at....
| Classification | % | Numbers |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 66.4% | 281 |
| Good | 23.4% | 99 |
| Sufficient | 5.9% | 25 |
| Poor | 4.3 % | 18 |
However quality has been getting worse in recent years, although we are nowhere near as bad as we were in the 1980s, apparently.
You can find out the current ratings for specific venues at Swimco.
A bold move adding 15 rivers...?
It's going to be a challenge to maintain these stats going forwards, as there are NO rivers which have good quality ratings ATM, so literally the best all of those 15 new river bathing spots can do is going to be sufficient.
Maybe this is a marker that the UK government actually intends to take steps to improve the quality of our rivers.
I personally think there is some hope for this as it's a VERY middle class thing having nice rivers in the countryside. Obviously it's a benefit in itself, but more importantly for politics, having clean rivers is something that is likely to resonate with most politicians, because most of them live in areas with rivers, and it's the kind of thing they will be able to relate to.
So I think there's hope for better water quality going forwards, because of self-interest on the part of our policy makers.
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I read this news with something of a cynical eye to be honest.
It's election year, and this shower of shts in power now would sell their own grandmothers into Saudi servitude to try and stay in power. Lol, it is the same thing with the Tories every time the general election is imminent... become much harder on those areas of society that their core voters have already demonized (insert immigrants and the unemployed) and pick some other random causes of concern to lie about improving. Such as the state of our costal and inland waterways.
I highly doubt it, they have let the water companies profits sky-rocket through increased discharges of untreated sewage, while 'claiming' that they're regulating them properly by levying fines that amount to a tenth of the money they made by dumping the sewage in the first place 😂
lol, before I left twitter I used to use the hashtag #torysewageparty where ever I could for these reasons.
I think all we can hope for is a targeted improvement to those new areas they have designated in the run up to the election. Although this would probably be a half measure, at least there would be some improvement 🤞
The only place I'll swim in the sea these days is off Anglesey from certain beaches where I know the current keeps any major sewage from polluting the waters 😬 which is kinda gutting as there is a fantastic beach much closer to Liverpool called Formby beach... but it is a risk to health to swim there😔
I hope you're well Karl 👍
Ooh sounds like you've got much more experience of it all than me - all I know is my local river is the worst in the country so defo a no go!
Sry, my comment above probably sounded a little 'tub thumping' 😂
I'm no expert on the issue, most of what I know about the problems with our rivers and coastal areas come from a combo of watching 'mortimer & whitehouse gone fishing' and still managing to get out scuba diving in the UK on occasion. My scuba diving is probably the only area where I've got a decent amount of first hand experience of the dire straights our costal areas are in. And stuff like not being able to wild swim with confidence on local beaches that used to be safe. The mad thing is that many of those beaches would be deemed 'safe' by the environmental agency, but we're taking margins of how much effluence is in the water, and 'safe' percentages of harmful chemicals. But I've learned with my chronic illness that what is deemed 'safe' based on statistical averages, can be quite bad for my health.
There are two or three place I used to scuba dive that I wouldn't anymore because of the sewage map that paints a pretty bleak picture, and the associative risks with my gut illness , which makes me really susceptible to any nasty bugs that might be in the water.
https://theriverstrust.org/sewage-map
When you take a look at that map it is pretty - shity - looking. The other thing to take into consideration is that for many years a large proportion of the sewage dropped into our waterways would have been treated, where as now it is a small proportion due to the shoddy
enforcementimplementation of regulations that makes it more profitable to dump the raw sewage and pay the fine, than treat it and not pay the fine.The whole situation is a load of 💩💩💩
It does sound bleak, unfortunately there's maybe not that much chance of it being an election issue.
There's very few places I'd risk swimming in. It really is bullshit I agree, this needs to be a priority.
Exellent's 66.4% is amazing. Why is quality decreasing? Because new rivers were added? The situation in Turkey is very bad. In small residential areas, the shores are full of garbage. People should be more conscious and the coasts should be kept clean.
I think it's just a slow and steady decline due to more sewage discharging mainly. We just need to plough in the money!
My goodness 15 more awesome rivers... I really gotta come to these places... It's going to get very good in the summer.. all these rivers are going to be full I guess... Thank so much for sharing