§ Viscount Montgomery of Alameinasked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress has been made in improving the quality of bathing waters, and when they expect all bathing waters to meet the standard in the EC Bathing Water Directive.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Baroness Blatch)Provisional results for the survey carried out during the 1990 bathing season showed that 77 per cent. of the 446 identified bathing waters in the United Kingdom met the mandatory coliform bacteria standards of the EC Bathing Water Directive. This compares with 76 per cent. of the 440 identified bathing waters in 1989.
Although this maintains the steady improvement of recent years, we believe that more urgent action is required to bring all of our bathing waters up to the highest standards. Last March my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment announced that in future all substantial discharges of sewage to sea should be treated at a sewage treatment works. The estimated cost of this was £1.5 billion. We are now able to announce that following discussions with the water companies in England and Wales, they have agreed to provide additional treatment for around 40 improvement schemes at an estimated cost of around £600 million over the next five years. This 15WA is on top of the £1.4 billion bathing water compliance programme announced last year, which the companies have also agreed to advance where possible.
This means that bathing waters will be improved sooner, and for many discharges the standard of treatment provided will be better than previously planned. Our aim is to complete the improvement programme for all bathing waters that presently fail to comply with the EC standards by 1995, though present indications are that this may not be practicable for nine large schemes where there are major technical difficulties.
The 1990 results for the United Kingdom are set out below in summary form. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment shall arrange for a more detailed summary of the results to be placed in the Library shortly, and we shall also be sending the results to the Commission of the European Communities.
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Bathing Waters Survey—1990 Results for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Compliance with bathing Water Directive (76/160/EEC): Coliform Standard Pass Fail Total ENGLAND Northumbrian Region 21 (20) 11(12) 32 (32) Yorkshire Region 17 (18) 5(4) 22 (22) Anglian Region 27 (23) 2 (5) 29 (28) Thames Region 3 (3) 0 (0) 3 (3) Southern Region 48 (45) 18(20) 66 (65) Wessex Region 39 (31) 0(7) 39 (38) South West Region 118(113) 15(19) 133(132) North West Region 10 (11) 23(22) 33 (33) WALES 35 (40) 15 (8) 50 (48) SCOTLAND 12 (16) 11 (7) 23 (23) NORTHERN IRELAND 15 (16) 1 (0) 16 (16)
Pass Fail Total Totals 345(336) 101(104) 446(440) Results for 1989 are in brackets