Sheppey's Bathing Water Rated Excellent

Swale’s popular beaches have earned top marks again after last year’s monitoring by the Environment Agency.

Minster Leas, Sheerness and Leysdown all achieved the highest rating of Excellent, bringing the beaches one step closer to earning a blue flag in time for summer.

The ratings from the Environment Agency are based on more than 30 monitored measures at over 400 bathing waters in England between May and September every year.

Julian Saunders, cabinet member for environment at Swale Borough Council, told SFM News: “We’re really proud of our beaches. Minster Leas and Sheerness have now held an excellent rating for five years, and Leysdown has been excellent for two years. The iconic Blue Flag is one of the world’s most recognised awards and we have to meet a series of stringent environmental, educational, safety, and accessibility criteria to qualify and achieving this excellent water quality rating gets us one step closer to achieving the coveted blue flag again this summer.”

Cllr Monique Bonney, cabinet member for economy and property at the council, told SFM News: "We’ve worked closely with Southern Water and the Environment Agency to maintain our excellent bathing water quality at our award-winning bathing beaches. We’re part of Southern Water’s bathing water enhancement programme that investigates any possible sources of pollution to create award winning beaches, and we also provide real time information to the beachbuoy scheme which provides alerts on possible sewage releases. We also enforce dog restrictions between May and October and carry out daily beach cleaning."