Map shows the worst beaches for water pollution in the UK

A spotlight has once again been placed on water quality in the UK, after dozens of athletes at a triathlon event in Sunderland fell ill.

At least 57 people ended up with sickness and diarrhoea after swimming in the sea off the coast of the Tyne and Wear city.

A water quality test later showed an unusually high number of E. coli colonies in the water.

The health alert came after months of concern about pollution such as sewage overflow in coastal areas and other bodies of water across the country.

With many of us keen to spend summer at the beach – even with the recent miserable weather – it’s important to know whether you might end up swallowing something nasty when you take a dip.

So Metro has created a map with some of the current worst offenders for bathing water quality around the UK.

We looked at bathing water alerts from official organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and compared them to the monitoring map from campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) to highlight ten areas of concern.

The areas, arranged in no particular order, are: Severn Mouth, Blackpool, Newcastle, Scarborough, the Wash, Clacton-on-Sea, Folkestone, Irvine, Lundin Links and Bangor.

There are seven areas in England, all of which have at least one coastal spot where swimming is not advised on the Environmental Agency’s Swimfo site.

Experts recommend against bathing in the water at Weston-super-Mare or Burnham-on-Sea, both of which are located at the mouth of the Severn river.

Blackpool North, South and Central are all highlighted by Swimfo, while SAS warns that sewage has recently been discharged in Bispham to the north of the Lancashire town.

In Newcastle and the north-east, there is an Environmental Agency alert for Cullercoats in Newcastle, and SAS notes a discharge of storm sewage at Seaham Hall Beach south of Sunderland.

Bathing is not advised at Scarborough South Bay, according to Swimfo, as SAS points out storm sewage has been released both there and in the North Bay in the past 48 hours.

Moving south to the Wash, there’s advice against swimming at Hunstanton beach and Heacham from both SAS and the Environmental Agency.

Clacton-on-Sea and Frinton-on-Sea in east Essex both also have warnings from SAS and Swimfo at the moment.

SAS advises that there has been sewage discharge at Folkestone in Kent in the past two days, while along the coast at St Mary’s Bay, the bathing water has been given a classification of ‘poor’ by the Environmental Agency.

Travelling up north to Scotland, Irvine has been given a ‘poor’ forecast for its bathing water by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa), and the same organisation has put its second-lowest general classification of ‘sufficient’ on the water there.

Lundin Links and Kinghorn, both on the southern Fife coast, are the only two bathing waters to be given the lowest Sepa classification of ‘poor’.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) has warned against bathing at Ballyholme and Crawfordsburn in North County Down, both of which are in the Bangor area.

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