Penarth Beach is officially a designated bathing water!

Over the last few months, we been following a campaign to get Penarth Beach designated as an official bathing water and now the application has officially been approved by the Welsh Government. The Vale of Glamorgan council and Natural Resources Wales will now be responsible for testing and submitting reports on the water quality from May to September, so Penarth Beach will be ready to be an official bathing water by the end of 2022.

This kind of collective data is important to ensure that the bathers’ health against pollution and provide information to the public to enable them to make informed decisions about where and when they bathe.

There has already been a great response, with 402 people responding to the consultation and there was a clear and common theme of how people felt about the benefits of Penarth beach becoming a bathing water. Some of common responses were:

• The mental health benefit of open swimming in these locations and encourages and increases exercise
• Getting people out in nature and encouraging them to connect with a more natural environment
• The increasing popularity of open swimming as a sport.
• The designation would encourage the awareness and improvement of water quality and infrastructure at these beaches.
• Several observations of a number of people already swimming in these locations, meaning designation would a least give them data on quality
• Giving people access to the data and information about the water quality will give them the ability to make an informed decisions before going into the water
• Having a designated bathing water will encourage locals not to travel to other location and it will bring others to Penarth beach
• The designation of Penarth beach waters might make it easier to improve the quality of the water, if the information is collected to know how to improve it.

This official designation will allow people to have access to data about the quality of the water, for people who are already swimming in it or to give people the encourage to start. It could even invite new people into the town to (safely) enjoy the wonderful sites of Penarth beach, and hopefully see the expansion of some amazing swimming groups, such as the Dawnstalkers– an outdoor swimming community, encouraging people to get in the sea, motivating each other to enjoy themselves and let go.