Consultation on the Implementation of the Rbwd
Consultation on the implementation of the rBWD
Water Quality Division (WQ1)
Defra
Area A/B, 2nd Floor
Ergon House
Horseferry Road
London
SE1P 2AL
4th February 2008
CONSULTATION ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REVISED BATHING WATER DIRECTIVE (rBWD)
1. Thank you for giving the British Resorts and Destinations Association (BRADA) this opportunity to comment on this strategically vital subject. As we have a UK membership including strong representation amongst authorities in both Wales and England this response is being submitted to both Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG). A hardcopy information booklet containing background detail on the Association and its membership is enclosed, much the same detail can also be accessed at
2. We congratulate you on a consultation document that clarifies the complex issues and makes very clear the base position, and also the constraints, aims and objectives involved. It also presents well argued and very clear strategic options, one of which, with certain caveats, explained later, we can largely support. As an organisation with a specific tourism remit we do feel duty bound to point out that the paper (probably for good practical reason) largely avoids reference to tourism and to the direct and indirect social and economic links between the declared bathing water standard in a relatively small well defined body of water and the wellbeing of tourism in the much larger and much wider associated coastal area.
3. Bathing water quality is an emotive, yet little understood issue, that readily attracts equally ill informed popular press attention. Thus, like it or not, there is a direct link between published bathing water quality results and the public’s perception of the quality and standards of the wider place and, as a consequence of that, a direct impact on social and economic wellbeing of many major and minor coastal communities. Your failure to take into account the financial consequences of not having Excellent water quality appears to us to skew your attention towards the absolute essentials of securing Sufficient quality in all bathing waters and potentially (in scenario 2) the desire of maintaining a few at risk Excellent and bumping up of easy win Good quality bathing waters to Excellent.
4. We are not convinced that you have given due thought to the consequences for what we estimate to be around 142 beaches in the higher Sufficient and lower Good categories that in 2015 will not in all likelihood have a quality of water that they can actively promote and for which no proactive efforts to enhance water quality, or to mitigate the results achieved are proposed. We accept that with limited resources available your scenario 2 option may well be the best that can be achieved by 2015. However, your apparent suggestion that planning for what can be done for the rest can wait until post 2015 is not acceptable and, in our view, seriously undermines the good work you propose to do mainly at the top and bottom of the range of bathing water standards.
5. For reference, it is worth noting that in 2006, 27.1 million staying trips were taken by the British to the British coast (business, conferencing and pure leisure), of these overnight trips 22.5 million trips generating £4.2 billion were for seaside holidays. England’s share of that coastal holiday market was
17 million trips and £3.6 billion of spend, equating to 32% of holiday trips, 35% of all nights and 32% of all holiday spend in England. In Wales the figures were 3.6 million trips and £3.3 billion, equivalent to 49% of all trips, 54% of all nights and 51% of all spend. (UKTS 2006). The latest available day trip figures estimate a further 270 million day trips were taken to the coast generating £3.1 billion in income. England accounted for 200 million of the trips and £2.5 billion of the spend. In Wales 25 million day trips generate £0.2 billion. (UK Day Visits Survey 2002/03). Even if there is only a grain of truth in our view that bathing water standards do have considerable potential to impact on tourism at the coast, with figures of this magnitude, you really should be taking far more overt notice of the tourism cost benefit equation in your deliberations.
6. Question 1. Given the potential consequences for tourism, any proposal which seeks only to achieve the minimum requirement is totally unacceptable. A similar approach to the 1975 cBWD had, by the 1980s and early 1990s, resulted in dire consequences for the reputation of many of the UK popular resorts. Your scenario 2 is, in our view, the bare minimum acceptable approach and, regardless of the financial constraints you detail, we would urge you to seek to find ways to do more. The argument for doing so being that you have failed to take proper account of the financial consequence of what the public’s likely perception of Sufficient and Good water quality will be, in an ever more environmentally conscious society.
7. Question 2. Your proposals to focus on securing/increasing Excellent bathing waters are eminently sensible. The question asked is, “if we do not agree with this approach then what category of bathing water would we focus on instead?” This makes it an either or question. In our view, you should be ensuring that the maximum number of those capable of attain and retain Excellent do so. However, notwithstanding the cost implications, we would also wish to see, at the very least, planning for, if not action being undertaken to move all other bathing waters up the scale towards Excellent at the earliest opportunity. This action, or at least visible planning for it, needs to take place in parallel to all other pre 2015 activities.
8. Question 3. It is unacceptable (and from a tourism PR point of view unthinkable) that any bathing waters should fail rBWD in 2015. It is our understanding that the predictive and discounting systems offer the only cost effective means of ensuring that some beaches will be able to reach Sufficient standard by 2015. Therefore, there is no alternative but to proceed with the development, unless we accept that bathing at the sites involved be banned and the bathing water declassified. We are not in favour of banning bathing, or forced declassification as a tactic of avoidance, however, if bathing (swimming) is not actually taking place at some or all of the sites involved, then declassification by agreement may perhaps be an option. Since we are not fully aware which beaches may be involved we can not comment beyond offering up the option as a possible way forward.
9. Question 4. If the prediction and discounting system can be used to help attain the bare minimum standards, then costs should be met from central resources and/or, if that proves unacceptable, from those bodies and organisations whose activities are directly contributing to the water quality failing in the first instance. Without knowing where and under what conditions these failures are occurring, it is difficult to comment on the detail of a polluter pays principle with any degree of confidence. Local circumstance will dictate who should pay. Whatever those circumstances, that cost should not fall disproportionately on the community adjacent to the bathing water. While they may appear to benefit most obviously from not failing, invariably the causes of such a significant failure will not be attributable to the actions of local community alone, if to them at all.
10. Question 5. We would be keen to see discounting used across the full range of water quality standards, but not as a means of mitigation against having to make any further improvement. We see prediction as a tool to help bathing waters achieve the highest available standard, at the earliest opportunity. In a wet climate with significant rural and urban water catchment areas the UK is always going to struggle to achieve and maintain Excellent water quality, particularly if there is no universal system for discounting the effects of short term events. We understand that there are costs and significant difficulties involved in developing the science of a predictive system, but arguably that is an EU and UK Government problem and it should be one for them to address centrally. We assume that other Northern European states will have similar issues and thus there may be opportunities to develop cost effective methodologies on a collaborative basis. Accepting that this may take time, then concentrating UK predictive efforts on attaining and retaining Excellent standard in the first instance is sensible. Who should pay? Circumstance may dictate a different funding methodology in each case, however, our general premise is that it should not fall mainly to the local community or to the local authority area directly involved. The coast is a UK asset; local communities are by default the local guardians, but that should not mean that they alone should foot the bill for maintaining the coast on the nation's behalf.
11. Question 6. We are unsure whether your seemingly plausible assumption on signage renewal is true or not. Much depends on precisely what information will eventually be needed on each sign and, critically, on early and accurate communication of those requirements to all beach management and other associated organisations. Simple replacement or updating of existing signage technically should not generate significant, truly additional costs. The same can not necessarily be said if the rBWD creates a requirement for bigger, markedly different or simply far more signs.
12. Question 7. We support the principle of giving the public all the available information needed to help them make sensible, informed decisions. If simple, easily understood, relevant information can be made available on signs, which do not need significant maintenance or regular revision, then it would be sensible to provide it, when and where the public want it. We do not support the provision of information for information’s sake, or the provision of a mass of information as an insurance measure against litigation. We are also concerned that in trying to stipulate the minim standards, or to define a universal standard, applicable in all circumstances the requirement may become too unwieldy. By all means develop and define public information requirements but do so with care and a proper understanding of the consequences.
13. Question 8. We have mixed views on the proposal not to consult again on the necessary amendment to the Regulation post 2010 concerning signage. You appear to argue that it is an unnecessary duplication that will add nothing to the process. We are not sufficiently close to that process to be certain that you are right. Thus we have a residual desire to retain the comfort of having a second chance option. If further consultation really will not give us the opportunity to review the signage issues, in the light of more detailed information and a better understanding of the signage requirements, or such a review would be too late to make changes, then it would be sensible not to consult again.
14. Question 9. Popular bathing water mythology has it that the designation of the current bathing waters was done on an ad hoc regional/home nations basis with some water being selected for all the right public health reasons and others for more or even less noble reasons. For example selecting sampling points near an out fall to force improvement action or away from it to avoid it. Even if they were all selected for the right reason that process took place at least 32 years ago and would have been based on the public bathing preference of the 30 year post war period prior to that. Over the last 30 plus years there have been dramatic physical water and tourism industry infrastructure changes, some of which will logically have had an equally major impact on the original rational for the selection of sites. In the meantime the pattern of bathing (lest we forget that this is fundamentally a bathing swimming issue) have changed dramatically, arguably making declassification, relocation/adjustment and the addition of new sites all potential options that need to be considered.
15. If the rBWD is genuine about public health, then as a minimum we would urge you to consider and then issue renewed guidance on what does or does not constitute a bathing water, particularly in practical terms like peak bathing usage and/or total seasonal usage. It may also be helpful to clarify the type of activity the directive is designed to cover and the relationship between a fixed point sampling site, the bathing water and the often very large surrounding area of beach, shore and the wider body of water in which the bathing water is located.
16. Although unlikely to be a popular suggestion with all of our membership, if the rBWD is to meet its public health objectives, then there may well be a case for a proper independent review of all the current sites and indeed all-possible potential popular bathing sites across the UK. The results of which could then inform further debate about the need for decalcification, relocation and additional classification. We do not underestimate the scale of that review task, nor the range of pragmatic issues associated with it. We also recognise that in many locations, for example resort beaches sites, change is no longer a practical option and, therefore, considering it is probably a waste of resource. Your current approach of asking those responsible for managing the bathing waters, if they wish to remove or add to the listing, could be seen as an extension of the alleged ad hoc selection process of pre 1975. Hence our suggestion that you either make that self selecting process more robust via proper direction, or that you take the opportunity that the revised directive gives to do a proper independent audit.
17. Early discussions concerning rBWD implementation suggested that there was a requirement, or at least an option, to test water at greater depth than the current man and a van shoreline testing regime allows. At the time it was suggested by you that testing further out from the beach should significantly enhance most UK results but that it would come at a not insignificant additional cost to the Environment Agency (EA) testing regime. At the time we were concerned that the need to avoid additional testing costs would win over against the benefit of possibly improved results. We are not sure whether the testing requirements have been changed, however, if they have then it is not an issue the consultation appears to address, giving rise to the thought that the issue of additional EA costs may have indeed won the day. As this seems an illogical step for Defra and WAG to take it would be helpful if you could clarify the reality of the deeper water testing proposals and what, if anything, happened to them.
18. BRADA and our colleagues in United Kingdom Beach Management Forum with whom we work, remain committed to ensuring that the UK reach and maintain the best possible water quality standard at the earliest opportunity. For its part BRADA remains acutely aware of the social and economic consequence of a public perception of less than “5 star” quality, particularly in emotive areas where things like family leisure and public health collide. We urge both Defra and WAG to take a proper account of the potential financial and employment consequences of not moving towards the best possible standards at the earliest opportunity. The Association and its individual coastal authority members are more than happy to offer any further assistance we can to achieve this laudable aim.
Yours sincerely
Peter Hampson
Director