The sun has been shining on Scarborough’s South Bay all week, but Steve Crawford isn’t opening up the surf shop he’s so proud of – “mahogany door, views over to the castle” – because the water isn’t safe to swim in.
“My business has vanished overnight,” he says. “On coronation weekend, the red flags went up warning people not to go in the water because of poor water quality, and now there are signs at every access point to the beach saying ‘No swimming’.”
Poor water quality linked to pollution has been a problem here for many years. But this is the first time Crawford has had to shut completely.
“Most days I can’t face coming down here,” he says. “I’ve been surfing since I was nine, I’ve run the shop in this old Victorian spa building for 17 years. Right now, I should be sitting outside, drinking coffee and chatting to people about surfing. But it’s all gone. My livelihood has evaporated.”
In a place like Scarborough, summer really matters: this is when the town comes alive, with donkeys and colourful bucket-and-spade shops filled with excited children.
But here and across the country, just as Britain’s beaches should be filling up, sewage and pollution are shutting them down.
The figures are alarming. Between 15 May and 30 September last year, sewage was dumped into designated bathing waters more than 5,000 times. There were an average of 825 sewage spills every single day into England’s waterways in 2022. In the north west, United Utilities discharged untreated sewage almost 70,000 times last year, while Severn Trent Water discharged sewage through storm overflows 44,765 times in the same period. In just a single eight-day stretch, Southern Water dumped more than 3,700 hours’ worth of sewage at 83 bathing water beaches.
The country’s most popular beach destinations have been suffering. Earlier this week eight beaches on the Fylde coast – including the iconic Blackpool Central – were shut to the public after a storm and heavy rain led to a massive sewage discharge by United Utilities.
Down south in Whitstable, they are having to order oysters in from elsewhere to replace their own shellfish, which have been contaminated by Southern Water dumping sewage. At West’s Whelks, Graham West says that with the arrival of summer, things are simply getting worse.
“It’s open, shut, open, shut with our shops, just as the busy summer period arrives, because our oysters – or the water we need to keep them in – are contaminated,” he says.
“Last week, I was due to get a load of oysters in but Southern Water decided to dump sewage into the sea – that means I can’t collect water for the oysters to be kept in. Our policy is three days post-sewage spill.
“So I had to buy them in from Jersey. One single loss of around £1,000 over a week. And yet thousands more houses are planned for Whitstable– the sewage system can’t cope as it is.”
Katy Taylor, chief customer officer for Southern Water, said: “We recognise how important the fishing industry is to the area. We’re investing over £25m on upgrades to our nearby wastewater treatment works, to improve capacity and reliability.”
On every coastline, people whose livelihoods depend on the great British seaside day out are raising the alarm about the impact of pollution – and not just on tourism.
Scarborough’s South Bay sits in Castle ward, one of the poorest in the UK. This week, Crawford has had to cancel surfing trips for children at a local pupil referral unit, which hosts children who struggle in school. “They were coming down once a week to get away from the stress they face,” he says. “This beach means a lot to people.”
Crawford has been involved in campaigns for cleaner water here for years – and some nearby beaches are clean and safe. But two weeks ago, when a national Surfers against Sewage protest was held, South Bay was the only beach where surfers were told it was not safe to enter the water for their protest.
Although the reasons for poor water quality along Yorkshire’s coast are various – as Yorkshire Water is keen to stress – one cause is sewage overspill, carried by pipes that dump human effluent directly into the bays. The government also acknowledges a nearby industrial pipe from a McCain’s chip factory – managed by Yorkshire Water – “may” be contaminating the water. Work is going on to improve this situation.
Yorkshire Water is monitored by the Environment Agency (EA). Both say complex factors affect water quality on local beaches – from seagulls to dogs and agricultural run-off.
Yorkshire Water says it has spent more than £100m in recent years improving local processing facilities. “We are intending to bring forward investment from 2025-2030 to meet the government’s storm overflow reduction plan … of an average of two spills per bathing water season,” it says.
Meanwhile, the sewage keeps coming. A massive discharge near Blackpool on Tuesday comes after 69,000 such events last year across the UK’s north-west from United Utilities. Yet the company still found the money to pay £300m in dividends to shareholders.
“The advice not to swim is unprecedented,” says Michelle Buckley in Lytham, who runs a local swimming group. “We do keep an eye on pollution through an app, but I’ve never known this happen before.”
Chris Webb, the Labour parliamentary candidate for Blackpool South, says: “It’s glorious sunshine here – and the beaches are out of bounds for tourists and local children, many of whom live in poverty.
“United Utilities did a major upgrade a few years ago that was supposed to prevent this, so it’s remarkable to see such a massive spill. This council has worked hard to get these beaches to a good standard. We had 19 million visitors to Blackpool last year – now many people will think twice about coming.”
A spokesperson for United Utilities says the storm impact was worsened by a damaged pipe that reduced site capacity, adding: “On Monday night, following intense rain, several storm overflows operated on the Fylde coast. If the current dry weather continues we are confident that the storm overflows will not operate again. The Environment Agency and local authorities will provide updates on when the advice not to swim can be lifted.
“The work to repair the pipe at our treatment works continues round the clock.”
Fighting off a bad reputation caused by corporate polluting is becoming a common challenge for Britain’s beach communities. Just 60 miles down the coast from Blackpool is New Brighton, also covered by United Utilities. It’s a beautiful beach at the top of the Wirral peninsula, yet the area has been found in recent studies to be highly polluted.
“Look one way and you see an urban landscape – Liverpool freeport and the town. Then look left and it’s these gorgeous sand hills and rocky cliffs, it’s stunning,” says Cathy Roberts, who runs a bookshop in New Brighton and is campaigning for cleaner water.
“It’s not an entirely fair label to say we are so polluted, it depends what day you take the readings. But yes, there is a problem. It has been confirmed to us by United Utilities that because of the tides we get pollution not just from our local area but from other places – Manchester, Cheshire.”
In 2022, there were 1,149 sewage dumps in Wirral that affected New Brighton. A local paper recently reported that swimmers had been forced out of the water by a “big brown stream”, although United Utilities said the incident was not related to its operations.
Roberts says the community is doing what it can. “We are a visitor economy and we need people to keep enjoying our beautiful beach. We are trying to work constructively with United Utilities. And we have a brilliant beach patrol group here: just yesterday, one of them noticed some grey sludge on the evening tide. So we will get photos and a sample and pass that on.”
But she laughs at the idea that the council, or the water company, might pay for the clean-up.
“We don’t even have public toilets here, despite asking for years. You have to just get this done, don’t you?”
United Utilities says: “Since 1991, we have spent around £3bn in our treatment works and sewer systems in the Mersey basin. We’re pleased this investment has already had a positive impact with the wide variety of aquatic life that continues to return to the Mersey.”
In his green tabard, Dave Peddie is a familiar sight on the beach. With his wife and a group of committed local people known as the New Brightonians, he has been picking up litter and noting floating sewage for 11 years.
“I can’t even tell you what I see, it defies description,” he says. “We see it particularly after heavy rain … The water company are 20 years behind with this. They need to do more to prevent pollution from getting into our rivers and seas.
“We have already lost a few businesses in town,” he adds. “It’s on a knife-edge: we need to know the water is clean.”
• This article was amended on 18 June 2023 to remove an image of a water treatment plant in Scarborough, Toronto, which was published in error. Also, Chris Webb is not the MP for Blackpool South, but he is Labour’s candidate in that constituency. And Webb made reference to Blackpool’s 19 million visitors last year, not “90 million” as we stated due to a transcription error.
