Armstrong lives in Lewes, a town 8 miles from Brighton, and usually goes swimming in nearby Seaford in East Sussex every day. But over the past week the water there has been too polluted to swim. In the week Friends of the Earth ranked the UK’s water companies for their environmental damage, and news of further sewage leaks emerged, the Guardian headed to Brighton beach to talk to swimmers.
According to public data, a sewage alert was issued twice at the beach in August, and 158 alerts recorded overall in 2025. It’s extraordinary that we can’t have clean beaches,” says Armstrong. This summer England has endured record-breaking heatwaves during which scores of people have spent time on beaches and rivers.
In Brighton, the state of the country’s water is an issue on many people’s minds. Hildi Mitchell, 55, runs a programme called Pool to Pier, where she teaches pool swimmers to swim safely in open waters. Increasingly, she is finding that pollution is stopping people from taking the leap to the sea.
When it comes to the safety of the water, checking for sewage spills has become as important as checking the weather and tidal patterns. Through Pool to Pier, Mitchell offers free workshops to children from families on low incomes. Swimming should be something that’s free and available to local families, but it’s not and that’s really sad.” Greg Veros, 59, has lived in Brighton for 22 years and swum all his life, but after falling ill due to what he believes was sewage pollution a few years ago, he now spends more time at Brighton’s outdoor swimming pool than he does in the sea.
He used to have to skip his daily swim if there was a rainstorm or a sewage scare, but now the pool has given him an alternative. But for Mitchell, there is nothing that can replace swimming in the sea. You’re not constrained by the black line on the pool.
Nobody’s in your lane, you’re not worried about getting in anyone’s way. It’s a place where you can just swim in the way you want to swim,” Mitchell says. Anna Field, 54, moved to Brighton so she could swim regularly, but, like Mitchell, she says checking for sewage spills is as important as checking the weather.
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