Lincolnshire has performed well in a new league table of clean beaches in England, with more than three-quarters of its swimming spots rated excellent for water cleanliness.
Dorset, Devon and Suffolk have the highest percentage of ‘excellent’ beaches for clean water, according to UK travel site Holiday Park Guru, which analysed Environment Agency summer water quality data from hundreds of beaches.
Lincolnshire is joint sixth out of 19 counties in the league table. The data includes beaches in Lincolnshire, including those in North-East Lincolnshire, a separate local authority.
Beaches in the UK: Brown Flag Winners
Meanwhile, the nation’s 13 dirtiest beaches are being offered ‘Brown Flag Awards’ ‒ including Blackpool (Blackpool North Beach), Weston Super Mare (Weston Main Beach) and Bognor Regis (Aldwick).The ‘winners’ in this league of shame are being offered complimentary brown flags featuring a poo emoji to display for swimmers. These beaches are rated as ‘poor’ by the Environment Agency due to bacteria such as e-coli from sewage and other waste:
(Weston Super Mare’s three water quality reading locations all rated poor but they have just been awarded a single Brown Flag to save expense!)
Good news for Lincolnshire
None of Lincolnshire’s beaches have been awarded Brown Flag Awards for 2024. In further good news, Lincolnshire (including North-East Lincolnshire) is one of only a handful of areas where all the designated beaches are rated either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. Beaches with the cleanest bathing water in the county include Mablethorpe, Sutton on Sea and Anderby Creek.
Lancashire came bottom of England’s league table with none of its ten designated bathing spots achieving the coveted three-star ‘excellent’ rating for cleanliness; Somerset, Norfolk, Yorkshire and Kent were all in the bottom half of the league table.
The Isle of Wight, Northumberland and Essex performed well, with all of their designated bathing areas gaining one of the top two ratings (‘good’ or ‘excellent’).
Here’s the league table in full, ranked by the percentage of beaches tested and rated ‘excellent’ by the Environment Agency for sea water cleanliness:
(N.B. Some counties have been combined for the table, such as East and West Sussex.)
Whilst Holiday Park Guru’s Brown Flag Awards uses published Environment Agency data, it does not have any official link with the Environment Agency or any other awards. It is intended as a tongue-in-cheek award to support the campaign for cleaner beaches.
How was the data gathered for the awards?
Holiday Park Guru used Environment Agency data based on 7,000 samples at 424 bathing waters in England which “is calculated annually based on samples from the previous four years”. They excluded rivers and lakes and just focused on beaches.
The water quality tests look for intestinal enterococci and Escherichia coli (E. coli) levels to see whether there is faecal matter in the water. This comes from “sewage, agricultural livestock, wildlife, birds and road drainage” according to the Environment Agency.
Each bathing resort then receives an official Environment Agency score of: three stars (excellent), two stars (good), one star (sufficient) or zero stars (poor). Overall, 66.4% of England’s monitored resorts currently score a three star rating whilst 4.3% score zero stars.
It’s important to remember that water quality readings are only taken from 15 May-30 September. During the winter, water quality tends to be lower along England’s coastline as higher rainfall causes more sewage and waste water to overflow into the sea and into rivers, making some more dangerous for swimming in the seven and a half months not covered.
Holiday Park Guru is an independent blog which mostly focuses on UK staycations. It has sister sites called Isle of Wight Guru and The Sleep Guy.
