Public outrage at the sewage scandal was already at fever pitch. 

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The Channel 4 drama Dirty Business poured fuel on the fire.

This brutal exposé of the sewage scandal laid bare what communities have known for years: that water companies have been dumping sewage into our waters with near-total impunity, while regulators looked the other way. 

So, with fury at boiling point, what does the government do? It tries to weaken the very laws designed to protect us. And that's why we're taking them to court.

Surfers Against Sewage, with backing from communities and alongside environmental lawyers Leigh Day, has filed a judicial review against the Environment Secretary, challenging reforms to the Bathing Water Regulations set to kick in this spring. 

These are the regulations which allow for popular areas of water to be designated to protect public health. But the Government's new reforms threaten to do the opposite.

At the core of our challenge is the new "feasibility assessment". This is a test every new bathing site must pass before it can receive protected status. 

This means that a river or beach deemed too expensive or polluted to clean up, simply won't be designated. The government calls this "avoiding poor value for money". We call it writing pollution into law.

Bathing water designation can sound like dry bureaucracy. It isn't. It's the only legal mechanism that makes monitoring for harmful bacteria like E. coli mandatory - the very bacteria responsible for the tragic death of Heather Preen, whose story was told in Dirty Business.

Designation forces polluters to act, provides vital water quality information, and drives investment. Without it, popular swim spots fall off the map: unmonitored, unprotected, unimproved. People will still dive in, just with no way of knowing if the water could make them seriously ill.

The impact of these so-called reforms would be stark. We believe 16 sites previously rated 'poor' - including Ogmore-by-Sea, Wales and Church Cliff Beach in Lyme Regis - could never have been designated under these rules.

Church Cliff lost its status in 2015 and locals fought to win it back in 2024, gaining the legal leverage to demand improvement. These reforms would slam that door shut permanently.

Our legal case argues on two grounds.

First, these reforms directly contradict retained EU law under the Bathing Water Directive, and a change of this magnitude demands full parliamentary scrutiny. 

Second, the government claims these changes will protect public health. We will argue in court that the opposite is true. Stopping measuring pollution is not the same as stopping pollution.

We know the sewage scandal won't be fixed overnight and that's why we're fighting for an end to profit from pollution on every front. In the courts, in Parliament, and on the water.

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Kirsty Davies is Community Water Quality Manager at Surfers Against Sewage.

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