Citizen science data

Explore bacterial water quality data from our citizen science monitoring programme across the UK.

Making sense of the data

Find out how citizen scientists monitored water quality and what the data means for our well-loved waterways.

Kirsty Davies (she / her) & Lizzie Cresswell (she / her)

Protecting Wild Waters Team

Protecting Wild Waters is a campaign to increase the number of designated bathing sites in the UK at our well-loved rivers, lakes and beaches.

Bathing waters are the only stretches of waterway where there’s an obligation to regularly monitor for bacteria harmful to human health and to hold polluters to account.

We support communities who are applying for bathing water status at their local waterway. We also lead on the Citizen Science water quality programme. Citizen science is vital in evidencing the sewage scandal and its impact on the health of our waterways.

Communities are using citizen science data to bolster their local campaign for cleaner rivers, lakes and seas which drives change at national policy level.

Latest Citizen Science data investigations