Focusing on the less beautiful aspects of Britain’s coastline, BBC’s Panorama will be showing a programme entitled ‘Britain’s Dirty Beaches’ on Monday night (7th September). The programme will investigate the outflow pipes that discharge sewage and other items into our coastal areas, and will show the results of it’s own specially commissioned scientific tests.
UK viewers will be able to see the programme on BBC One, Monday 7th September at 20:30 or information about the programme is available on the BBC website.
Update 16th September 2009: The Environment Agency has responded to the Panorama program with their own short film which can be viewed below. You can also view their response to our blog post in the Comments section of this post.


September 16th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
BBC Panorama on 7th September 2009 raised some interesting points about the cleanliness of our beaches, but it didn’t give the full picture. A lot more information, which was provided to the BBC by the Environment Agency, was not included in the programme.
A film has been produced by the Environment Agency to provide important information about bathing water. 97 per cent of beaches in England and Wales meet minimum European Bathing Water Standards; and improvements to the Environment Agency’s monitoring and testing regimes are aiming to further improve the quality of our beaches.
You can watch the film at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvAkO2Bm7jQ