SEVEN Dorset beaches fail guideline standards for bathing water quality, new research from DEFRA shows.

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs released a report entitled 2014 Compliance Report For Bathing Waters In England.

Although the beaches pass basic mandatory standards, it reveals a number of Dorset beaches have failed guideline standards on bathing 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.

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UPDATED: Fears guideline bathing water standards could scare tourists off