Castle Cove beach, which is one of seven Dorset beaches DEFRA say would fail new water quality standards

BASIC: Castle Cove Beach in Portland Harbour

First published in News by Liz Jackson

SEVEN Dorset beaches would fail basic bathing water quality standards under new standards being implemented in 2015, new research from DEFRA shows. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs released a report entitled 2014 Compliance Report For Bathing Waters In England, which reveals a number of Dorset beaches would fail the new stricter standards on bath-ing water quality. These are: Castle Cove beach and Sandsfoot Castle beach in Portland Harbour, Seatown beach near Bridport, Church Cliff Beach and Front Beach in Lyme Regis, and Highcliffe Castle beach and Avon Beach in Christchurch. Cllr Ian Bruce, Weymouth and Portland Borough Councils briefholder for community facilities, said that he would be interested to know how the beaches were monitored as things like currents and flooding can have a significant bearing on results. He said he would not like to see stricter standards putting off people from the boroughs beaches if the water was still safe to swim in. Cllr Bruce said: Its a strange situation if people have been perfectly safe and we have not had any problems then somebody comes and says we are going to keep tightening the standard. Clearly we do want to make sure everything is safe but we dont want to scare people off going to a particular beach. The results also show that Lyme Regiss Church Cliff Beach has failed current mandatory standards for bathing water, which comes after a previous pass result in 2013. Bathing waters are defined as beaches, lakes or ponds that are used by a large number of bathers and have been designated under the bathing waters directive. From 2015 a revised bathing waters directive will be issued, using stricter standards. These are effectively the same standards DEFRA has used to decide if the beaches would fail, which they have called guideline compliance for the transition period between the old directive and the new directive. The report says 84.5 per cent of South West beaches would pass the new standards, putting the seven Dorset beaches in the regions bottom 15.5 percent. It would also put them in the bottom fifth (19.3 percent) of beaches across England. In addition, DEFRA has said on its website that it is surveying the number of users of Church Cliff Beach in Lyme Regis. The beach is one of 12 across the country that will be surveyed, and if the number of bathers using the beach is considered to be low, DEFRA will consult whether to remove the beach altogether from their list of bathing waters. The full report can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/1EpdjNC.

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UPDATE: Fears new bathing water standards could scare tourists off