Yorkshire Water has announced that the water quality at Reighton has achieved the ‘excellent’ rating, meaning that the beach can now apply for the coveted blue flag award. The water quality moved from ‘good’ to ‘excellent’.

Several other Yorkshire beaches were also promoted to the excellent category, including Scarborough North Bay, Hornsea and Robin Hood’s Bay. Other beaches that retained their excellent rating were Whitby, Cayton Bay and Danes Dyke.

Filey’s beach used to be a blue flag beach until 2012, when it lost the status due to heavy rainfall entering the sea from the drainage system before it could be treated. Other beaches have a Pollution Rain Forecast applied to their waters, this allows for samples during periods of unusually wet weather to be discounted from the full bathing season results. Filey was not included in this model, which resulted in the waters being relegated from excellent to good.

From 2019 Filey’s waters will have the Pollution Rain Forecast applied and thus it is expected that the beach will reach excellent rating, which should lead to be the beach regaining its blue flag status.

In order to gain excellent rating the water quality has to be high, but factors are taken into account: such as environmental education and information (a beach map with location of facilities), environmental management (keeping the beach clean and having public toilets) and safety and services (beaches should be patrolled by lifeguards, have accessibility features and availability of drinking water).