The Thames could get its first designated bathing site for wild swimming, the government has announced. This would be the second river designated for swimming in England.
Members of the public have been invited to give their views on the possible designation of Wolvercote Mill Stream at Port Meadow, Oxford, and another bathing site on the Isle of Wight coast.
If accepted, the water quality would be monitored for bathers, with improvements being ordered by ministers if minimum standards were not met.
Sewage Free Thames, the group that applied for the bathing spot in Oxford, said: “We love our rivers: they’re part of our daily lives, and we all walk, play, socialise, swim, paddle, row or fish on or around them. They give us many benefits, and they’re home to numerous other species.
“However, our local rivers are in a poor state. In 2020, raw sewage was released into the upper Thames for nearly 50,000 hours. We want to make dumping raw sewage in rivers illegal, and our rivers safe and healthy for people and wildlife again.
“We are applying for bathing water status for a stretch of the River Thames through Oxford. This will prevent sewage spills and improve water quality.”
The stretch of river is popular with swimmers and paddle-boarders, but there are fears the water quality is poor. Local volunteers monitor the river for sewage spills, but Thames Water has promised to give real-time overflow updates in the near future.
The environment minister Rebecca Pow said: “Bathing waters in England are a success story, with almost 95% achieving ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ status last year – the highest since new standards were introduced in 2015. We protect people’s health at popular swimming spots across the country by requiring the water quality at those sites to be regularly monitored and improvements made if they don’t meet the minimum standard.
“It is great to see people getting involved in efforts to increase the number of designated bathing sites and I encourage local residents and swimmers to take part in these consultations so we can have as many views as possible to inform our final decision.”
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “We fully support the application for bathing water status and have assisted the Oxford Rivers Project with sampling, including providing volunteers for a sampling day earlier this year and testing the samples in our laboratories. We are also trialling notifications in close to real time to river users in parts of Oxfordshire when discharges are made so that they can make informed decisions on whether to enter the water and will be rolling this out to all our permitted discharge points by the end of 2022.”
Last year, the River Wharfe in the West Yorkshire town of Ilkley became the first river in England to be given bathing status. Campaigners hoped this would pressure local government and the water company to keep the stretch sewage-free, and clean it up.
However, the river’s water was deemed poor quality by the Environment Agency after discharges from sewage overflows. Yorkshire Water said at the time it had committed to achieving a designation of “good” for the popular swimming area.
