St Annes

United Kingdom Coastal 3 - Sufficient

St Annes is a resort beach with a small pier extending into the Irish Sea. Sand dunes run along the edge of the sandy, flat beach which has up to one kilometre of exposed sand at low tide.

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Water

Coastal bathing water

Location

Fylde, Lancashire, Fylde District

Season

Designated bathing water since 1988. Official monitoring season runs from May to September.

Water Quality

Sufficient (2025). Assessed under rBWD

Risks

The Fairhaven Car Park storm overflow and Sandgate Pumping Station overflow are no longer in use. The flow has been diverted away from the bathing water by United Utilities.
There are numerous storm, emergency and surface water outfalls that discharge to the River Ribble and its estuary. Sewer overflows operating during, and following, periods of heavy rain, can result in a fall in quality of bathing water at St Annes. Fairhaven Pumping Station, which discharges to the south of St Annes bathing water, has undergone significant investment to protect bathing water quality. In 2013 a significant improvement programme to overflows around the Preston area was completed by United Utilities to protect bathing water quality. The programme included the construction of a large storage tunnel (40,790 m3) to the south of the River Ribble to store storm flows as well as a number of other individual schemes to improve storm and emergency overflows.
As part of the improvement programme of work for United Utilities (from 2015 to 2021) the storm overflows from Chorley, Blackburn and Preston Sewage Treatment Works have been improved to protect bathing water quality. The programme also requires that storm overflows close to bathing waters will have equipment installed to monitor spills to the environment. This will help to identify where bathing water improvements may be needed in the future.
This bathing water is included in the Surfers Against Sewage “Safer Seas Service”. This service can alert you to Combined Storm Sewer Overflow discharges via a phone App and in addition, it includes the Environment Agency Pollution Risk Forecast warnings where they are available. Further details of the service can be found at - http://www.sas.org.uk/safer-seas-service/ and via United Utilities website at http://www.unitedutilities.com/Bathing-Waters-Map.aspx.