We provide here a link to the BBC 1 Panorama programme, 12th April 2021, which examined the nature, cause and scale of sewage pollution of the country’s rivers and sea.
» Bathing Water
- BBC 1 TV’s Panorama looks at sewage pollution of rivers and the sea
- Supplementary submission to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s ‘Water Quality in Rivers’ inquiry looking at the impact of indoor intensive livestock (factory) farming
- The Hansard record of the House of Commons Committee Stage debate and vote on Amendment 200 to amend the Environment Bill 2019-2021
- Is the new Bathing Water Directive being correctly implemented in the UK, asks Marinet
- Marinet produces as history and assessment of the old and new EU Bathing Water Directives
- A Tribute to Patrick Gowen, 1932-2017, who helped found Marinet and was its first Chairman
- Southern Water fined £2m for gross sewage pollution of Kent beaches
- UK Bathing Water quality results for 2015
- NEF launches coastal economic regeneration project, titled “New Blue Deal”
- Marine Conservation Society launches new Beach Guide
- North East MEP tackles sea pollution at Whitburn
- Bathing Water compliance has an uncertain future
- Fourteen of Scotland’s beaches polluted
- New Dredging Beach Hazard
- Bathing Water Results for 2013/2014
- UK bathing beaches in 2013 of “high quality” says Good Beach Guide
- The best and worst of Britain’s beaches, using your photos
- 2013 Good Beach Guide reveals that sea bathing water quality in 2012 was “weather affected”
- More Coastal Hazards emerge
- Waste Water Directive to be watered down?
This supplementary submission to the Env. Audit Committee considers the scale and impact of intensive livestock (factory) farming in the United Kingdom, accompanied by the key questions of what happens to the animal sewage waste arising from these farms, is this animal sewage waste properly treated, and is it entering the the rivers and the […]
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The Hansard record of the House of Commons Committee Stage debate and vote on Amendment 200 to amend the Environment Bill 2019-2021 in order to create a legal requirement on water companies to address first class sewage treatment in their sewerage and drainage management plans required by the Environment Bill (Clause 76, section 3) and […]
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In a History written by Marinet of the old and new EU Bathing Water Directives, 76/160/EEC and 2006/7/EC, the long struggle to implement these Directives is recorded, along with the equally long struggle — only partially successful — to secure the implementation of the full rigour of the monitoring regimes and attendant health standards which […]
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A History of the campaign and struggle to secure the implementation of the European Bathing Water Directive 76/160/EEC (the old Directive) into UK law has been written by at Patrick (Pat) Gowen, 1932-2017, who was a founder member of Marinet and its first chairman. This History is accompanied by an Assessment of the European Bathing […]
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Patrick Gowen was a founding Member of Marinet at its inception in 2002 and its first Chairman. We provide here a Tribute to a person of exceptional calibre and commitment to the environment, and to whom Marinet and many others owe a great debt. May his example remain a standard for the future and to […]
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The Guardian reports, 19th December 2016: Southern Water has been fined a record £2m for flooding beaches in Kent with raw sewage, leaving them closed to the public for nine days. The Environment Agency called the event “catastrophic”, while the judge at Maidstone crown court said that Southern Water’s repeat offending was “wholly unacceptable”. The […]
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Defra has published the 2015 compliance and performance data for Bathing Waters throughout the UK, see here. In 2015, 415 bathing waters were monitored in England, 102 in Wales, 84 in Scotland and 23 in Northern Ireland, making a total of 624 bathing waters across the UK. Of these, 608 are coastal or estuarine waters […]
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The New Economics Foundation reports: On 24th November 2015, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) hosted a cross-party parliamentary briefing at the House of Commons about the Blue New Deal initiative. Thanks to Peter Aldous MP for Waveney, Suffolk, for making this possible. The Blue New Deal aims to deliver more and better jobs for coastal […]
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The Marine Conservation Society reports, May 2015: “A new era in beach information — as beaches get set to meet a stricter bathing guidelines the MCS popular website goes beyond the beach. We’ve published our Good Beach Guide to campaign for better water quality since 1988. We can now reveal that it has achieved many […]
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Europe and You reports, 10th March 2015: “The North Sea coast is heavily polluted, a new report has confirmed. “The European Environment Agency has collated data from across Europe looking at a number of different factors. “When it comes to water quality, the poorest quality showed up along the South coast of England, northern France, […]
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In 2015 the EU Bathing Water standards alter to reflect those of the new Bathing Water Directive 2006/7/EC . Official opinion is that the new Directive delivers stricter standards than the old Directive, and that therefore in 2015 less sea bathing waters are likely to comply than at present. However, Marinet observes that two facts […]
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The annual survey by the Scottish Environment Agency SEPA shows that many of their beaches failed the EC tests in May and August this past year, this far worse than last year when all were said to meet the standards required. The two worst polluted were Heads of Ayr in South Ayrshire and Lunan Bay […]
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A new and rather novel hazard has arisen on our beaches, discovered when an off duty explosives expert walked by a man exercising his dog by Lower Marine Parade on the beach at Dovercourt (near Harwich) throwing for his retrieval what at first appeared to be a miniature Rugby football. On closer inspection, it was […]
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DEFRA’s Bathing Water Newsletter of June 2014 contains the Bathing water results of 2013, the findings for 2014, the European Commission Bathing Water Report of 2013 plus information about the implementation of the revised Bathing Water Directive. These can be seen on-line by going to: www.gov.uk/government/publications/bathing-waters-in-england-2013-compliance-report www.gov.uk/government/publications/bathing-waters-2013-projected-classifications-in-england http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/water/status-and-monitoring/state-of-bathing-water/state/state-of-bathing-water and www.gov.uk/government/collections/bathing-waters
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The Guardian reports, 15th April 2014: “As well as helping butterflies and bees, last year’s hot and dry British summer led to a record number of beaches reaching the highest standard of water quality in nearly three decades. The Good Beach Guide, compiled by the charity Marine Conservation Society (MCS), said that in 2013 almost […]
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The Guardian reports, 27th June 2013: “It’s not been great news recently for the British beach, according the Marine Conservation Society, the number of cigarette butts littering UK beaches actually doubled last year and almost two-thirds of the litter recorded was plastic and therefore unlikely to break down. It seems that wet weather in the […]
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One of the UK’s wettest summers on record has led to a worrying drop in the number of beaches around the country being recommended for their excellent bathing water quality in the annual ‘Good Beach Guide’, published online by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). MCS has recommended only 403 of the 754 UK bathing beaches […]
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The increasing serious loss of sand cover of our Norfolk beaches has produced a further hazard to beach users and swimmers, in that the long buried steel bases of World War II shoreline defences and the base of abandoned non-maintained sea defence groynes have been uncovered, leaving sharp metallic spikes, invisible to the unwary. […]
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Are legal requirements to be changed to delude the public from awareness of the true level of sewage pollution of our bathing waters? On 16th October 2012 the Foundation of Environmental Education (FEE) announced a “Major increase in safe bathing areas thanks to the Blue Flag award” and that “the public in almost fifty countries […]
