Third 'Brown Flag' award for Aldwick Beach as Environment Agency ratings stay low - but council says progress is being made

The award, also handed out to Worthing Beach House, is given out to beaches which were rated ‘poor’ by Environment Agency officers during this year’s water quality survey.

The brown flag award itself, however, is given out by UK Travel Site Holidayparkguru.co.uk in order to spread the word about subpar standards on UK beaches. With 19 spots all over the country, and 19 flags – each tastefully adorned with a poop emoji – Aldwick joins spots like Dunster Beach in Somerset and Blackpool North in Lancashire on what is now very nearly a Dirty Two Dozen.

Unfortunately, Aldwick is something of a mainstay on the Brown Flag awards list, with a ‘Poor’ environmental health rating since 2022, and several previous brown flags.

It’s also part of a downward trend across the country, which saw a 46 per cent increase in brown beaches from last year, and in Sussex itself, where only 47 per cent of beaches are rated ‘excellent’ for water cleanliness.

Even so, Arun District Council say the Aldwick site is ultimately heading in the right direction: “Whilst the ‘poor’ classification for Bognor Regis (Aldwick) has been retained, and that is of course disappointing, it is not surprising due to the way in which bathing water classifications are determined,” an official told Sussex World. “Each bathing water area is classified as Excellent, Good, Sufficient or Poor based on the previous four years’ of samples.

“Southern Water, the Environment Agency and Arun District Council have been working closely through a technical steering group and a partnership group to identify sources of contamination and resolve them. This collaborative approach is important to tackle possible sources of pollution to the bathing water wherever they are discovered. As well as this forum, the Yellow Fish campaign has now been introduced to this area to highlight the impact of what is put down the drains has on the bathing water quality.

“We can confirm that given recent sample testing, the quality of the water is moving in the right direction but this won’t be seen in the classifications yet due to how the accumulative testing works.”