New Bathing Water Directive
For a number of years the European Union struggled to agree a new bathing water directive to replace Council Directive 76/160/EEC concerning the quality of bathing water. A new directive was finally agreed on February 15th, 2006, in the form of Directive 2006/7/EC and effectively replaced Directive 76/160/EEC.
Directive 2006/7/EC(.PDF 408Kb)
This directive was implemented in 2008. The contents of the directive in Northern Ireland were introduced with the Quality of Bathing Water (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008. Detailsare also given at the end of this page.
The purpose of Directive 2006/7/EC is to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment and to protect human health by complementing Directive 2000/60/EC. Directive 2000/60/EC established a framework for community action in the field of water policy.
Information about Directive 2000/60/EC('The Water Framework Directive')
The new bathing water directive lays down provisions for:
- The monitoring and classification of bathing water quality
- The management of bathing water quality
- The provision of information to the public on bathing water quality.
It is its principal objective of managing bathing water quality and the provision of information to the public on bathing water quality that makes its different from the original 1976 bathing water directive.
The first classification of bathing water quality carried out in accordance with Article 4 of the new directive must be completed by the end of the 2015 bathing season.(2005 to 2008 Predicted Compliance Assessment of Northern Ireland's Identified Bathing Waters using Annex 1 & Annex 2 2006/7/EC(.PDF 43Kb))
The application of the new directive is still in the early stages of discussion in the UK and the actions that will need to be taken to comply with it have not been fully ironed out.
However, member states had to introduce the laws, regulations and administrative provisions needed to comply with the directive by March 24th, 2008.
Bathing water assessment and classification is carried out in accordance with Article 4 of the new directive. The assessment period includes the last four bathing seasons to see whether Northern Ireland's bathing waters comply or not.
Compliance will be assessed and reported using the existing directive until 2014, but will run in parallel with the new directive from 2012.
The Quality of Bathing Water (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008The requirements of the revised Bathing Water Directive have been introduced into local legislation by the Quality of Bathing Water Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2008 (Statutory Rules of Northern Ireland 2008 No. 231) and are now in operation.
An electronic copy of these Regulations is available from the Office of Public Sector Information website.