Exmouth - Pollution Incident Response

Last week, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published its annual bathing water classifications for 2025.

These classifications are drawn from monitoring data from the Environment Agency and cover 451 English bathing waters. However, there were two bathing waters unassessed due to access issues bringing the total to 449.

Each bathing water will be classified into one of the following categories:

• Excellent
• Good
• Sufficient
• Poor

Across England this year, 93% (417) have been classes as ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ or ‘Sufficient’, compared to 92% in 2024, while 32 sites have been classified as ‘Poor’.

The Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly (DCIS) region includes 154 designated Bathing Waters; this year 98% of them received an ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’ classification.

In Your Area:

Exmouth and Ladram Bay have remained at Excellent.

Under the Bathing Water Regulations 2013, some of the samples may have been disregarded if advice against bathing was issued at the time the sample was taken.

This is because a warning against swimming has been issued in advance and the conditions are not considered to be reflective of the actual water quality most people bathe in. Both Exmouth and Ladram Bay are eligible to have their samples disregarded. You can read more about this here: Bathing water classifications and short-term pollution – Creating a better place

Sandy Bay has moved from Sufficient to Good

Previous investigations found that pollution causes were 50% misconnections and 50% urban run-off. Most misconnections have now been resolved, as a result of extensive monitoring, sampling and tracing work completed by both the Environment Agency and South West Water (SWW).

We are part of an action group, alongside SWW technicians and beach owners to share and compare data and collaborate on improvements. Although improvements have been made in the catchment, there is still work to do. Current data suggests pollution sources to be 10% agricultural, 10% sewage, 70% urban run-off and 10% unknown. We will inspect all businesses and water company assets in the catchment and our misconnections surveys are ongoing.

Budleigh Salterton – Move from Excellent to Good

We have linked increased levels of both E.coli and Intestinal enterococci in samples to the Knowle Brook. This has led to a marginal deterioration in class from Excellent to Good.

We are working to identify the sources of these Faecal Indicator Organisms. We have added an additional sampling point on the Knowle which will aid our investigation. We may also run an agricultural campaign in 2026. We will review Budleigh Salterton East site data against the current statutory sampling site to test for significant difference in salinity and bacteria results.

The Otter catchment has been a priority for our Agricultural Regulatory teams since 2021, with the majority of farms in the catchment being inspected since that time. We have worked with Natural England and farmers on Catchment Sensitive Farming programmes to encourage better farming practices and improve water quality in the surrounding areas.

We inspect all water company assets in the catchment yearly and SWW have undertaken a programme of infiltration reduction work, started in 2024. It is hoped this will reduce the number of short duration spills from combined sewer overflows and will continue through the town in 2025.

Each year we release details of water company performance. 2024 data can be found here: Environmental performance assessment (EPA) star ratings 2011 to 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

South West Water has again been rated a 2-star company, meaning it requires improvement. It has never risen above a 2-star rating since the EPA began. In 2024 it was responsible for 189 pollution incidents, just 5 less than the previous year. Four of these were classed as serious pollution incidents.

The beauty of the Devon and Cornwall coastline brings both visitors and stress to the water and sewage network. That is a big challenge for South West Water and improvement is within its reach. It needs to get better at building for the future rather than responding to failure.

We inspected 335 South West Water sites and assets last year and we are committed to doubling the number of site and asset inspections by April 2026 as part of our overall goal of 10,000 inspections.

To ramp up our regulation we are nationally investing in 500 additional staff including environment officers, data analysts, enforcement specialists and technical experts, as well as team leaders and managers. We have developed new digital systems and significantly increased the number of water company inspections - in 2024/25 we delivered over 4600 water company inspections across the country and we are on track to deliver 10,000 in 2025/26.

We have received the permit variation applications from South West Water, but our initial review of the documents shows there is a lot of information we still need to receive from them. Once we have this information, we will duly make the applications. It now depends how long it takes SWW to send us the additional information.

Duly making is the formal sign off to say we have everything we need to start processing the application.

We must open our consultation within 30 working days of the duly making date. As soon as we know that we can duly make the permit applications, we will let you know when the consultation will start and how you can take part.

Update 1^st September

We continue to monitor the Littleham Brook and over the past two weeks we have on occasions detected low levels of ammonia which are being diluted before the stream meets the beach.

Our officers have been regularly on site to verify data from the monitoring equipment.

South West Water are trying to identify who is misusing the drainage system which involves inspecting potentially hundreds of domestic and commercial property connections.

It is likely that there is more than one source to this intermittent misuse.

Our meters share real time information with our staff, and we will continue to closely monitor the situation. Please check Swimfo (link in the information bar) for advice on current bathing water quality.

Update: 19 August 2025

Our monitoring has shown that since we removed our advice against bathing on Saturday morning, water quality in the Littleham Brook has remained normal and stable.

We continuously monitor streams which feed into Exmouth beach, and pollution alarms ensure we can respond as soon as possible when pollution is happening.

We have not been able to find the source of the pollution last Thursday, and will continue to investigate any further alarms for pollution. Exmouth is a priority beach for us which is why we have increased monitoring and Officers assigned to this important area.

15 August 2025

At 10:12 this morning we issued advice against bathing at Exmouth beach following elevated ammonia readings in the Littleham Brook.

Overnight, our three water quality monitoring meters picked up elevated ammonia readings, with two separate spikes of pollution. An Environment Officer attended site last night after the first ammonia spike.

This morning, the ammonia levels are lower but are still present in the water. As the Littleham Brook discharges onto the beach at Exmouth we issued the advice against bathing on a precautionary basis while the water quality impacts are investigated further.

We are continuing to investigate what could be causing this pollution. South West Water are supporting this action by checking their assets, including for any potential misconnections to their sewerage network in the area.

This a developing situation and we will keep you updated as we receive further information. Please check Swimfo (link in the information bar) for advice on current bathing water quality. Our meters share real time information with our staff, and we will continue to closely monitor the situation.