Poor Beaches, Damaged Businesses, No Report: FHDC’s ‘Urgent’ Water Quality Work Goes Nowhere

On 1 April 2026, Folkestone & Hythe District Council agreed that investigating water quality across Romney Marsh and the East Stour should happen “as a matter of urgency”.

That wasn’t our wording.

It was theirs.

The amended motion required urgent investigation into commissioning an independent report identifying relevant watercourses and optimum sampling locations, before officers produced costed options for targeted testing. The scientific scope was widened to include E. coli, intestinal enterococci and traces of human faecal contamination. The final motion was carried unanimously.

That was 174 days ago.

Nearly six months later, that “urgent” work still hasn’t arrived on the Overview & Scrutiny Committee agenda.

We pointed this out in July, when 110 days had already passed without residents seeing an independent report, proposed sampling sites, costed options, timetable or results.

And this isn’t some academic exercise involving water disappearing harmlessly into a ditch somewhere on Romney Marsh. The whole point of looking at the East Stour, open sewers and connected watercourses is that what happens inland doesn’t necessarily stay inland. Water, drainage and wastewater move through connected catchments and sewerage systems before ultimately reachinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO0H0Pt7bs4 rivers and the coastal environment where local people swim. The original council debate itself explicitly linked inland watercourses with the condition of coastal waters.

That matters rather a lot when Dymchurch and Littlestone are both officially classified “Poor” for bathing-water quality. The Government’s 2025 classifications list Dymchurch as Poor and Littlestone as Poor, and Government guidance requires advice against bathing to be displayed where a bathing water receives that classification.

At Dymchurch the Environment Agency’s current signage is unambiguous: “Poor bathing water quality” and “Advice against bathing.” It says bathing is advised against and that a partnership involving the Environment Agency, FHDC and Southern Water is working to better understand the sources affecting water quality.

It matters economically as well. Telling visitors not to swim is hardly an advertisement for seaside communities whose cafés, pubs, shops, attractions and accommodation businesses depend heavily on people coming to the coast.

And this isn’t simply our interpretation.

On 16 September 2026, Dymchurch Parish Council reported that Parish Cllr Dougie Young and FHDC Cllr Tony Cooper had attended a Westminster Hall debate on public ownership of the water sector representing Dymchurch and the wider Romney Marsh community. The parish council said sewage pollution in rivers and seas and failures in monitoring were highlighted and that “the public health consequences and business impact of poor bathing water quality were raised.”

Yet nearly six months after FHDC decided further investigation was urgent, even the chair of Overview & Scrutiny appears to have had enough.

Discussing the committee’s work programme on Tuesday night, Cllr Tony Hills said he was “a little bit disappointed” that certain things were not being accelerated.

He singled out water quality.

“It actually went into council on the 1st of April, April Fools Day,” Hills told the committee.

“And it as a matter of urgency was in the wording and it hasn’t happened yet.”

Hills said he had already raised the matter and added:

“Basically we need to accelerate this back into this committee.”

Quite.

One fails to comprehend which part of the adjective urgent FHDC is struggling with.

Cllr Paul Thomas immediately backed him.

“I was going to raise that very point,” Thomas said.

“When can we expect to see a report to this committee?”

That’s now the central question.

The original motion wasn’t some vague declaration that water quality is terribly important and everyone ought to have another meeting about it. It required something tangible: investigate commissioning an independent report, identify the watercourses, establish optimum sampling locations, ensure any proposed testing could produce evidence the Environment Agency would regard as valid, and then develop costed options for a targeted testing programme.

We welcomed the decision on 2 April because, after years of discussion about pollution, councillors had finally agreed to start gathering local evidence. As we wrote then: “Now comes the difficult bit: finding out what is actually in it.”

Apparently the difficult bit was getting started.

And the situation hasn’t somehow disappeared while FHDC has taken its time. In 2022, both Dymchurch and Littlestone were classified Good. Dymchurch fell to Sufficient in 2023 and Poor in 2024; Littlestone fell from Good in 2022 to Poor in 2023 and has remained Poor. Both were again classified Poor for 2025.

So while the council calendar turns, local people are living beside beaches carrying official advice against bathing, businesses are dealing with the reputational consequences of poor bathing-water quality, and councillors themselves are now questioning why supposedly urgent work hasn’t happened.

The council itself decided the next stage was urgent.

Nearly six months later, its own scrutiny chair is saying it hasn’t happened and needs to be accelerated.

Thomas asked the simplest question of all:

“When can we expect to see a report?”

Residents — and businesses trying to make a living beside beaches where people are being advised against bathing — deserve an answer.

Because urgent doesn’t mean whenever somebody eventually finds room in the committee calendar.

It means urgent.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime