Bathing Waters

What is it:

The EU Bathing Waters Directive (2006/7/EC) sets standards for faecal indicator organisms in waters at designated bathing beaches. Bathing beaches are designated on the basis of their recreational use and hence risk to the public of exposure to faecal indicator organisms. Scotland has 84 designated bathing waters. Over the three and a half month season from 1 June to 15 September, more than 1,500 water samples are collected and analysed.

The layer shows the results as displayed in the Web Map Service (WMS) feed from SEPA.

Updated graphs (as found in Scotland’s Marine Atlas) can be accessed in the ‘Data Sources’ tab at the bottom of the page through the Scotland's Environment interactive tool. See 'Current classification' and 'Historical classification' tabs for breakdown by Scottish Marine Region.

Links to Scotland's Marine Atlas:

Chapter 5: Leisure and Recreation

Data originators:

Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)

This information page is part of the theme:

Microbiological Contamination

Leisure and Recreation

More Information:

From 2015, bathing water quality is described by a classification statement (see link below to Bathing Waters (Scotland) Regulations 2008) based on a dataset gathered over four years of monitoring, while bathing water profiles will describe the overall condition of a location. The new classifications – excellent, good, sufficient and poor – will be calculated at the end of one season for display at the start of the following season, and will indicate the status of the general water quality condition for each location.

Scotland’s Environment web site has detailed results and graphs on Bathing Water quality where the user can select particular designated sites or years to see graphs of results. See 'Interactive Bathing Water results (maps and graphs)' link on 'Data Sources' tab below. The 'Current classification' and 'Historical classification' tabs have breakdown by Scottish Marine Region.

This page was last modified on :

Wednesday, April 5, 2017 - 13:55

Map Type	Click title for metadata and licence information	Date of data	View Map
Map Layers (NMPi)	Bathing Waters (current) (SEPA WMS)		Access this map on NMPi

Type	Link Title	External Link
Web link	Interactive Bathing Water results (maps and graphs) - Scotland's Environment - visualisation tool	www.environment.gov.scot

Type	Title	External link
Web link	Scottish Government - Bathing Waters	www.gov.scot
Datasets	SEPA - Bathing Waters	www.sepa.org.uk
Web link	EU - Bathing Water	ec.europa.eu
Web link	Keep Scotland Beautiful	www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org