Hythe Bay Bathing Water Warnings: Sewage Pollution and E. coli from Hythe to Dungeness

Hythe Bay’s “no swim” problem didn’t start in the 2020s. It has a paper trail that runs from the mid-1970s, through the coliform “fail” tables of the 1980s, into the Environment Agency’s long-running investigations at Littlestone, from 1999, and right up to today’s E. coli headlines and advice-against-bathing signs. 

In March 1975, the New Folkestone Society was already warning—bluntly—that this stretch of coast was “contaminated by untreated sewage” even as it attracted growing numbers of visitors. A decade later, Parliament was still fielding questions about whether holidaymakers should be warned off local beaches. In July 1988, Ministers confirmed that five named bathing waters—Folkestone, Sandgate, Hythe, Dymchurch and St Mary’s Bay—had failed bathing-water standards in both 1986 and 1987. The Government line then was strikingly hands-off: no blanket advice was issued nationally; it was for local water authorities and environmental health officers to decide if “exceptional local circumstances” justified warning the public. 

By February 1989, the official picture looked worse rather than better. A written parliamentary answer set out the pass/fail results for Kent bathing waters, and the Hythe Bay coast reads like a roll call of “Fail”: Folkestone, Sandgate, Hythe, Dymchurch and St Mary’s Bay failed in 1987 and again in 1988; Littlestone was recorded as “Pass” in 1987 but “Fail” in 1988.  It is worth remembering what “fail” meant in that era: the standards and indicators have evolved, but the core issue—human faecal contamination—has not.

The modern official history of Littlestone (in Hythe Bay, which the Environment Agency describes as stretching from Folkestone down to the headland of Dungeness) shows both how much infrastructure has been built, and why the problem can persist anyway. The Agency records “regular occurrences of reduced water quality” triggering investigations at Littlestone from 1999 onwards, with some exceedances attributed to storm overflow discharges and contamination from marsh drains—and, crucially, with “a high number of private sewerage systems in place especially towards Greatstone”.  In other words: even after big sewage-treatment upgrades, private systems and land drainage still matter.

Those upgrades were real, and the chronology is unusually specific. The Environment Agency’s Littlestone profile notes UV disinfection installed at New Romney sewage treatment works in 1992 and upgraded in 1999, and improved treatment at Hythe sewage treatment works installed in 2001, described as improving quality within Hythe Bay.  Then came the big local step-change: “first time mains drainage” in the Greatstone/Lydd area. Kent County Council’s 2005 planning report for Southern Water’s recorded that Greatstone’s properties were, at that point, on septic tanks or cesspools—and described the vacuum sewer network proposed for Greatstone within a wider New Romney/Greatstone/Lydd-on-Sea scheme. The engineering case study published on completion describes 423 vacuum collection chambers, serving “up to four properties” each, across a system running to many kilometres, and makes the key point that residents were not obliged to connect even once the public sewer existed.

That single “optional connection” detail is one reason Hythe Bay can have a sewer in the ground and still have private systems near the shoreline. The Environment Agency’s bathing-water profile text for Littlestone states that the 2007 scheme created the opportunity for first-time sewer connection for Greatstone and Lydd properties previously served by private systems—but that owners decide whether to connect, and “to date” about 20% had done so. So the honest long-run picture is not “all cesspits” and not “problem solved”: it is “network built, partial take-up”, with lingering private systems and other sources still capable of degrading water quality.

Fast-forward to the 2020s and the same coastline is back in public conversation—this time with the modern language of E. coli and intestinal enterococci, and with prominent “advice against bathing” messaging. Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Cabinet was told in October 2024 that the Bathing Water Regulations 2013 require the council to inform the public about bathing-water quality and pollution incidents, and that the two “Poor” sites locally were St Mary’s Bay and Littlestone (with others ranging from “Sufficient” to “Excellent”). The report is frank about what the investigations were focusing on: for Littlestone, it refers to connecting cesspits bordering the bathing water to mains sewerage; for St Mary’s Bay, it refers to investigating contamination into the “New Sewer” waterway.

Local “no swim” messaging has not only been bureaucratic; it has been visible on the beach. In August 2024, news outlets reported that “no swimming” warnings at two Kent beaches—St Mary’s Bay and Littlestone—would remain in place until at least 2025, citing persistent poor water-quality classifications and the public advice not to bathe. By the time the 2025 annual classifications were published, the official picture still showed trouble on parts of this coast: Littlestone was classified “Poor” for 2025, and Dymchurch was also classified “Poor”, while Hythe and Sandgate were “Excellent” and Folkestone and St Mary’s Bay were “Sufficient”. That combination matters because it underlines the point residents often make anecdotally: the “problem coast” is not uniform. Conditions can differ sharply along the same bay, shaped by outfalls, drains, rainfall, land use, and local plumbing—public and private.

Southern Water, for its part, points to collaborative work and improvement—particularly at St Mary’s Bay. Its 2024 bathing-water season report describes a community-based steering group in Folkestone and Hythe, with the council, the Environment Agency and the internal drainage board meeting regularly, and states that St Mary’s Bay’s classification has improved to “Sufficient”. The same report explicitly references third-party issues (including “leaky cess pits … found and fixed in Littlestone”) as part of the wider bathing-water challenge, rather than treating the problem as storm overflows alone. 

But the political pressure remains, because bacteria numbers are not abstract. At a Folkestone & Hythe council meeting in October 2025, Councillors discussing bathing-water quality referred to sample results at Littlestone involving very high E. coli readings and elevated intestinal enterococci, arguing the figures showed a serious deterioration; the leader responded by referring to ongoing multi-agency work and recent improvements at St Mary’s Bay. Whatever view one takes of who is most at fault, the direction of travel is clear: “no swim” has returned as a lived reality for sections of a coastline that has been wrestling with sewage and human-waste contamination for decades.

The uncomfortable lesson from the archive is that Hythe Bay has never had a single neat culprit or a single neat fix. In the 1980s, the coastline was failing standards. In the 1990s and early 2000s, sewage-treatment upgrades arrived. In 2007, first-time mains drainage gave hundreds of properties the option to connect—yet official text still records only partial take-up. And in the 2020s, the warnings are back, framed in the modern language of E. coli and enterococci, and in the legal duties on councils to inform the public when classifications are “Poor”. 

If there is one “through line” from 1975 to now, it is that the sea reflects what happens on land. When private systems leak, when misconnections send foul waste into surface water drains, when marsh drains carry contamination, when storm overflows operate, or when catchments are overwhelmed by rainfall and run-off, the bay pays the price. That is why the question for this coastline is no longer whether the warnings are “historic” or “recent”. The question is whether, after half a century of being told the sea is sometimes not fit to swim in, the agencies with power—councils, regulators, and utilities—can finally make “advice against bathing” the exception rather than a recurring summer fixture. 

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism For The People NOT The Powerful