By Caroline Hager
It’s holiday time and many of us are plunging into the waves at our local beach during the hot spells which even Cornwall is enjoying this summer. Yet our seas and rivers are in a bad way. Sewage pollution continues to be pumped directly into the sea on many parts of the British coast and serious pollution incidents by the English water companies rose 60% last year, according to recent data from the UK Environment Agency. Poor water quality prompted a huge outcry followed by promises of improved infrastructure investment, tougher regulation, and greater accountability from water companies. The UK government has vowed to take action. These headlines brought back memories of my amazing job thirty years ago when I worked for the Environment Agency providing information and advice on EU environment legislation at a time when the UK was trying to shake off its label as the “Dirty Man of Europe” and EU legislation was driving environmental improvements. How have those improvements evolved over the last three decades? I decided to dip into the European Commission’s and the European Environment Agency’s reports on the Bathing Water Directive to see what the data tells us about bathing water quality trends in the UK and the EU.
Dating back to 1976, the Directive on bathing water quality was one of the earliest environment laws to protect the environment and health of Europeans. This EU law – updated in 2006 – requires EU countries to monitor and report on the bacteria in bathing water which can cause terrible stomach upsets, diarrhoea and even serious illness. Information on the quality of the water must be provided to the public. Bathing water is tested and classified as “excellent”, “good”, “sufficient” or “poor”, depending on the level of faecal bacteria. Warnings concerning short-term pollution must be issued to prevent swimmers and other water users from entering the water. Corrective action must taken to address poor water quality. The Directive has led to a drastic reduction of untreated or partially treated municipal and wastewater ending up in bathing waters.
The status of the UK’s bathing waters has improved considerably since the 1990s with the percentage of excellent-rated sites rising from an average of 28% to 63% in 2016, with little improvement since then.
| UK sites minimum standard (%) | Excellent‑rated sites (%) | |
| In 1990s | ~28% | ~28% |
| 2002 | ~99% | ~78% (guideline standard) |
| 2016 | ~96.5% | ~63% |
| 2024*1 | ~92% ) | ~64% |
This positive trend was reflected across Europe with the number of beaches rated “excellent” increasing from 53% in 1991 to 85% in 2024, with minimum compliance rising from 74% to 96%, a clear marker of success driven by legislation.
The UK’s geography and climate is a major factor why the UK’s share of excellent beaches is well below the continental average of 85%. Frequent rainfall increases the polluting stormwater runoff into rivers and coastal waters. And, sadly, there has been insufficient investment to modernise and replace the UK’s old Victorian-era storm sewer overflows. Many EU countries have separate sewer systems or stricter controls on combined sewer overflows.
Nonetheless, the EU Bathing Water Directive (and the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive) was responsible for the UK’s dramatic improvements in water quality from the early 1990s through to the 2010s. The legal push for stricter testing, public reporting and enforcement led to upgrades in infrastructure and compliance rates.
After leaving the EU in 2020, the UK retained EU water quality standards in domestic law under the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018, but lost EU enforcement oversight. From 2021 onward, the UK stopped reporting its bathing water quality results to the European Environment Agency and 2020 was the last year UK sites appeared in Europe-wide assessments, making international comparisons difficult today. Without EU oversight, the UK faces new challenges in maintaining and advancing these gains, and there has been a dip in regulatory ambition.
Recent reforms have reduced monitoring frequency for testing water quality to every three years, from annually under the EU’s water framework directive. And clean-up efforts have slowed, according to the Office for Environmental Protection (set up after Brexit to hold ministers to account on environmental standards). In 2024, 63% of UK bathing waters across England were rated “excellent”, whereas the EU average of “excellent” bathing waters stood at around 85%. Even more worryingly, poor-rated sites in the UK rose sharply – from just 4 in 2021 to 37 in 2024 – highlighting deterioration in water quality and exposure to sewage-related pollution. The St. Agnes-based Surfers Against Sewage and others continue to exert pressure on the government and water companies to end sewage pollution and protect our health.
Meanwhile in Brussels, the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive has been revised in the light of new scientific evidence and risk assessments, and the European Commission is reviewing the Bathing Water Directive to check whether it is still fit for purpose. Yet the UK was and is not part of these discussions despite its wealth of scientific expertise and know-how. The UK’s partnership with the EU on the environment matters. Hugely!
Aligning UK standards with EU environmental standards is one of the priorities of the European Movement’s excellent new campaign calling for an UK/EU Energy, Climate and Environment Partnership.
“Britain once helped shape the EU’s environmental acquis. Maintaining alignment with raising standards would demonstrate that the UK remains committed to high quality science-based regulation”. Too true. The European Movement is calling for its recommendations to be discussed at the next UK/EU summit. You can support the call on the UK government to join the UK-EU environmental partnership by signing the EM’s petition One Earth One Team.
In the meantime, if you are off to the beach, do check out the water quality before you hit those waves!
- Environmental Agency’s Swiminfo provides official real-time data for bathing water data.
- Surfers Against Sewage live water quality map showing where it is safe to swim.
1 Environment Agency data for England in 2024
Great Article. The EU is recognised world-wide as holding the gold standard in regulations – most scientifically based, most humane, and least affected by lobbyist. This should be mentioned much more often by Rejoiners, not the narrow focus on trade. And it fits into a broader narrative of a shared community of values – very relevant today as we have lost a large chunk of this community to the orange madness.