On 13th May 2025, CRAG launched a public consultation supporting a bid for bathing water status for Amble’s Little Shore Beach. You can read about that on our previous blog post, but here is what we’ve been up to since!
Amble Puffin Festival on the 24th May was the perfect opportunity to get our Puffins out to promote the bid and gather more surveys from the public to support the application!
Dry Water Arts Centre in Amble hosted a Community Creative Event on June 21st where all could drop in to express their feelings for the beach.
They also hosted a free event to learn how to read the water and say safe in the water with channel swimmer, Frabces Anderson, Ice Mile Antartic Swimmer, Jane Hardy and Tim Hardy of the Shorebase Trust.
Dovecote Street Arts hosted a fabulous CRIT on the Beach evening for us on the 24th June which really helped to publicise the application to a wider audience.
Counting bather numbers is essential to the survey and the first weekend in July saw over 100 bathers counted on both days which is fantastic. Even more swimmers were counted on a second survey day in early August.
We’ve been blown away by the support for the Little Shore bathing water application. We submitted the applciation well before the 31st October 2025 closing date so what can we expect to happen next?
From November 2025 – Februrary 2026 DEFRA will follow up with any specific questions they have about our application.
Between Februrary – March 2026 DEFRA will launch a public consultation. In 2024 this ran for two weeks from 26th Feb-10th March, and will seek views from the public about whether Little Shore should be added to the list of designated bathing waters in England.
We will be notified if our application is sucessful by 15th May 2026.
If you want to know more or how you can get involved, you can find information on our What can you do page, or contact us using our email: coquetriveractiongroup@outlook.com
CRAG 