Angus beaches hit the mark

Broughty Ferry, Lunan Bay and Montrose beaches all received 'excellent’ gradings, while Arbroath (West Links), Carnoustie and Monifieth were rated as ‘good’.

In North East Scotland as a whole, seven beaches receiving excellent ratings with nine good and one sufficient. No beaches received a poor rating.

Terry A’Hearn, Chief Executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) said: “Improving Scotland’s water environment is a key priority for SEPA, and that includes the bathing waters so many of us enjoy.

"Across Scotland, we work to protect watercourses through licensing, inspection and regulation of discharges, and pollution incident response.

"In addition, we provide advice and guidance to the public, industry, developers, and local authorities.”

Minister for Environment and Land Reform Mairi McAllan said: “Scotland's bathing waters are so important to our environment and to people's health and well-being and it is great to see hard work and investment delivering results."

Some 99 per cent of Scotland’s designated bathing waters met the required environmental water quality standards for the 2021 bathing water season, with 38 per cent achieving ‘excellent’ status.

The Scottish Government funded “My Beach Your Beach” campaign which is delivered by Keep Scotland Beautiful has also successfully helped people care for our beaches and bathing waters by raising public awareness to reduce beach pollution from dogs, gulls, and litter.

In particular this year SEPA noted huge improvements at Ayr (South Beach) which had been classified as ‘poor’ for four years in a row with another poor classification threatening the loss of its designated bathing water status.

However, a combination of planned pollution control measures and improvement projects, together with a largely dry summer, helped reduce pollution run-off.

This resulted in a significant improvement in water quality.