Inside the campaign for Thames bathing water status

And how to apply for your own swimming spot

I was really excited to receive the news that DEFRA has formally approved 13 new bathing water sites across England, especially as I was directly involved in one of them: The Thames at Kingston and Ham.

Applying for bathing water status isn’t complicated, but it is time-consuming. You also need to fulfil DEFRA’s requirements, which sometimes isn’t possible, especially for inland sites.

For example, I first had the idea to apply several years ago. The place I wanted to see designated is my usual and favourite swimming spot. It’s a well-used and beautiful location, but we ran into a couple of issues.

First, there are no toilets. This doesn’t make much sense in the context of river swimming and how people use this spot; turn up, swim, leave. Current users have no real need for them. However, our research and questions to DEFRA suggested this would be grounds to refuse the application.

Second, Thames Water proposes to build a new river water abstraction point here and replace the water they take out with treated sewage. If this scheme goes ahead (we hope it won’t), it will ruin the location for swimming.

Luckily, a short distance upstream, there is another popular swimming spot that does have access to toilets. It’s also where the local Bluetits group swims, so the number of swimmers is even higher. We decided to work together to put in an application for this location instead – and in the end, the Bluetits did most of the actual work needed to submit an application. This included surveys, stakeholder engagement, swimmer counts and writing the application.

The role of lead applicant fell to Rebecca Mole, a headteacher and local swimmer, who took on the task of compiling all the evidence and submitting it – and she did a brilliant job.

We knew we had met the criteria as we understood them, but the wait was still nail-biting. Luckily, our site was one of the 13 put forward for public consultation in March and April – but we still had to wait until 15 May (the official start of the bathing water season) to learn the final outcome.

Bathing Water Status means we now get:

• Regular, independent water quality testing
• Published results that inform the public about when it is safe to swim
• A legal framework for identifying and addressing sources of pollution

Luckily, we got the result we wanted, but it was worth going through the process regardless. It helped build connections with local swimmers, other river users and local politicians, and showed us how much love there is for the river, and desire to see it healthy.

We also hope it will result in remedial work to the structure on the riverbank where swimmers enter the water, and make it more accessible for swimmers with mobility restrictions.

If you want to apply for bathing water status where you swim, a good place to start is to contact the bathing waters team at Surfers Against Sewage, who can guide you through the process.