Citizen Designation
If you’re testing your local swim spot, you can self-designate it as a bathing water.
Across the UK, communities are taking matters into their own hands. Ignored by regulators, and concerned about pollution by profit-hungry water companies, they’re creating Citizen Designated Recreational Waters. They’re testing, putting up signage, and campaigning for an end to pollution.
Here’s how you can do the same.
Testing the water
Bathing waters are the only stretches of UK waterways that are regularly monitored for water quality and its impact on human health. Once a site is designated, your nation’s environmental regulator will sample weekly during the bathing season. (You can apply for bathing water status here.)
Citizen-designated Recreational Waters are tested by the community instead. This may be through the Surfers Against Sewage Citizen Science programme, or funded and carried out through a different NGO- or community-led project.
At SAS, our programme of testing runs from May to May, as we think a set summer bathing season is nonsensical. Water lovers jump in year-round and monitoring should reflect that. Unfortunately, testing is expensive, so we can only support a handful of communities each year. There is an application process you can sign up to hear more about below.
Other NGOs may be able to support with testing:
Or, if you can secure funding, we have a full toolkit and online training to get you started. We can add your data to our citizen science map.
Signage for your site
You may want to think about signs for your site. The sign will provide information on the water quality to anyone in the community who swims there, including testing results and any information on known pollution sources. It should also link to any information about your wider campaign, such as a Facebook page or website.
Below, you’ll find some template examples for signage. Each of them serves a slightly different purpose, and you can tweak them to be specific to your bathing site. There are options for each devolved nations so make sure to chose the one for your region.
Citizen science in action
