The East Riding Green Party is demanding greater detail regarding Yorkshire Water's £100m investment plan for Bridlington after a significant rise in pollution alerts at South Beach.
The East Riding’s Green Party has called for greater detail over Yorkshire Water’s £100m Bridlington investment plan. The council’s two Green councillors recently took part in a clean up of the town’s South Beach.
The party has pointed out that, despite the Environment Agency recently upgrading the South Beach’s bathing water quality from Poor to Sufficient, the number of pollution alerts has increased. The area saw 80 in 2024, which increased to 192 in 2025, 184 of which were sewage overflow activations by Yorkshire Water.
Green Party councillor for Bridlington South ward, Andy Walker, said:
“Sufficient is I’m afraid insufficient – we must be aiming for Blue Flag standard Excellent like Hornsea and Withernsea. Extending the current bathing water season (currently May 15 – September 30) would mean we get water quality testing over a longer period to better inform what’s actually going on, and better reflects when locals and visitors want to go for a swim.”
Yorkshire Water is investing £100m in Bridlington over next five years to improve asset performance, drive down spills and improve bathing waters. Cllr Tim Norman, also a Green Party councillor for Bridlington South, said:
“Of course we welcome this much needed and frankly long overdue investment but need to see more detail about how the money’s actually going to be spent so we can be confident that it’s going to effectively stem these increasing harmful and potentially unlawful discharges of sewage into the sea to a minimum because of there being no capacity in the local system.”
Yorkshire Water has announced a 24.5 per cent overall decrease in discharges into regional watercourses in 2025 when compared to the previous 12 months. The decrease in 2025 follows a 12 per cent reduction in discharges in 2024.
Richard Stuart, director of asset delivery and engineering, said:
“A reduction in the number and duration of discharges across the region in 2025 is a positive. The dry weather in 2025 contributed to the reduction, but we also saw above average rainfall in the region in January, September, November and December. Our £180m investment over the last two years targeted over 100 storm overflows and is delivering a reduction in storm overflows across the region.”
“Some of the work as part of this investment was completed in early 2025, so we are yet to see the full benefit during an entire 12-month period, but we are seeing the investment beginning to make an impact. Of course, there is more to do and we’re underway with a further £1.5bn investment to continue tackling the performance of storm overflows.”
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