Bathing Water Status: Rivers

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

I am delighted to have been successful in securing this debate to cover such an important subject, and it is very good to see my hon. Friend the Minister in her place at the Dispatch Box. She has led many Government initiatives on improving our environment, which of course I strongly support.

There are many elements to the work to improve our water quality, but I am only going to focus on one specific element in this debate. As colleagues will have seen from the title of the debate, I want to see more rivers achieving bathing water quality status. Specifically, I want the River Nidd at the Lido Leisure Park in Knaresborough to achieve bathing water status. Even more specifically, that is a pinpoint location rather than a stretch of river, because that is the process we have to engage in.

My hon. Friend the Minister is a knowledgeable and well-travelled lady, but I should detail for the House a bit more about the Nidd. It is a tributary of the Ouse, rising in the high dales on Great Whernside and flowing down through Nidderdale, skirting Harrogate and going through Knaresborough before joining the Ouse. The upper section is in the Nidderdale area of outstanding natural beauty, then the Nidd gorge, and when it reaches Knaresborough it forms part of one of the most famous Yorkshire views. I cannot distribute pictures, but I ask hon. Members to imagine a castle on a crag, a viaduct over the gorge and homes cascading down the valley side—Knaresborough is a very beautiful town.

Just downstream from that famous viewpoint is the lido, a leisure home site owned and run by Meridian Parks and the Maguire family. It is also a popular location for wild swimming. Of course the issue of water quality is not confined to one area, and while we have many designated bathing areas around our coast, there are very few inland areas and those few are overwhelmingly lakes, not rivers. Indeed, looking at the data from the Outdoor Swimming Society, 98% of areas with bathing water status are coastal.

There is one river in our area of Yorkshire that has achieved that status, and it is the River Wharfe in Ilkley. It is good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) in his place, and I know he intends to say a few words and share some insights from his excellent work there. The purpose of seeking this debate was to highlight that many more rivers must be awarded bathing water status right across our country and to promote our campaign for the River Nidd in Knaresborough.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

Inadvertently or not, my hon. Friend is making almost precisely the points that the Environmental Audit Committee made in its inquiry into water quality in rivers: that bathing water quality status should be an objective of every water company over the next pricing period, so that we can radically improve the quality of our rivers and allow more people to take great pleasure from swimming in all weathers in more and more rivers around the country.