Does Sheerness deserve its Blue Flag status?

A report in The Times has poured cold water on the award claiming beaches at Sheppey’s seaside town were contaminated with raw sewage 92 times last summer while the flag continued to fly.

But members of the Sheppey Bluetits wild water swimmers have defended the stretch of sea and say they haven't encountered any problems.

Hugo Tagholm, who heads campaign group Surfers Against Sewage, is calling for flags to be taken down during a spill. He said: “It could be misleading and subject people to health risks.”

Surfers Against Sewage trawled through water industry data to challenge official claims of excellent water quality.

It discovered almost half of England’s 76 blue flag beaches had been blighted by spills during last year’s bathing season from May 15 to September 30, including 108 incidents at Tankerton across the water near Whitstable.

But Penny Chequer said: "I swam most days last summer and despite having a compromised immune system I did not become ill at all."

Kim Stickings added: "I have never been ill and I have been swimming since July. I have never seen anything gross either. Every time it rains I get a notification that there has been a spill but I have never been affected ."

Another said: "It's actually cleaner-looking than when I was a kid. I've swum all year since June and no lurgies."

Christine McDonald said: "I've been swimming since May 2021 and have never been ill through going in the sea. I have never seen any nasties. Fish, jellyfish and a seal yes, but nothing nasty."

Heidi Martin-Barshell added: "I’ve swum regularly since early last year and can say I’ve never seen anything floating that shouldn’t be except for the odd bits of plastic. I’ve never knowingly been ill through sea swimming."

Councils wanting blue flag status pay £730 a year to the Keep Britain Tidy charity to check beaches meet minimum standards. Water quality must be rated ‘excellent’ based on weekly tests by the Environment Agency.

All three of Sheppey’s beaches, including Minster and Leysdown, have been given a clean bill of health for 2022 based on last year’s readings. But Surfers Against Sewage says tests are only on one part of the beach at a given time and could fail to detect sewage elsewhere.

In a bid to clean up its act Southern Water, which was fined a record £90m for dumping billions of litres of raw sewage into the sea from 17 sites across Kent, West Sussex and Hampshire between 2010 and 2015, is installing a state-of-the art monitor to test for bacteria every 15 minutes at Tankerton.

Surfers Against Sewage said it had 286 reports of people falling ill after swimming in the sea off Britain last year.

A spokesman for Swale council said: “Sheerness has had the Blue Flag for a number of years and we’ve recently had confirmation that the bathing water quality has again been rated excellent along with our other bathing beaches at Minster Leas and Leysdown.

“We are signed up to Southern Water’s Beachbuoy alert system and get notifications about water quality from the Environment Agency. If there is an incident we have signs in place to alert the public. We also have RNLI Lifeguards on duty during the busy summer season who use their flag system to advise people if the water is unsafe.

“The idea of lowering Blue Flags is interesting but we aren’t sure people would be aware of what it meant. While all our bathing beaches have Blue Flags, this hasn’t always been the case so if a beach were to lose its status, which looks at a range of factors not just water quality, there would be no flag to lower."

Southern Water has been asked for a comment.