15 New Low Quality Designated Bathing Areas...

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....

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.