I welcome the news that the Environment Agency (EA) has agreed to review the way it judges whether Filey should be given the prestigious Blue Flag beach status. Following a joint call from Scarborough councillor Mike Cockerill, they will now take another look at whether the Pollution Risk Forecasting (PRF) system should be applied to Filey for the 2019 bathing water season. The monitoring process allows for some sample results to be discounted where adverse results can be directly linked to known events, such as heavy rainfall.
When it was launched in 2011 Filey was not included in the system, although this was not the case for many other Yorkshire resorts, including the South Bay at Scarborough. This has had a significant and very unfair impact on Filey’s ability to qualify for the prestigious Blue Flag. In response to our concerns, the EA stated that Filey was not initially included “because bathing waters that were at excellent quality or did not respond to rainfall events, when modelled, were not included in the system. For Filey in 2011, it seems the dataset we had around this time did not show a strong enough relationship between rainfall and poor water quality to suggest it was worth including”. However the EA has conceded that “if the model works as intended with the data we now have for the site then we should adopt the PRF approach”
Whilst this is very good news for Filey, I share the view of Councillor, Mike Cockerill, that the new system should be applied retrospectively for the 2018 data. If the town is included in the EA’s Pollution Risk Forecasting (PRF) I believe it would get Filey over the line to excellent water quality and, with it, the prestigious Blue Flag, which acts as a guarantee to tourists that a beach or marina they are visiting is clean and maintained to the highest standards. We are continuing dialogue and hope to secure further concessions.