As of 15th May 2026, Sandgate Granville Parade has been designated a bathing water, following a long campaign and application process led by the Parish Council and local community.
Weekly Environment Agency water testing have commenced from there and will continue throughout this and future years. The beach at Battery Point previously confusingly named Sandgate Beach (despite not being in Sandgate At All!) has been renamed as Seabrook Beach. The monitoring that has taken place there until now applied to that location.
Until we have a full year’s testing, Sandgate Granville Parade Water Quality is unclassified.
Seabrook Beach has excellent water quality, and has had in testing for years. We hope the same will apply at Granville Parade, but we don’t know: EXACTLY why we wanted testing at Granville Parade where there is also an Emergency Storm Overflow. We suspect it will be excellent except after periods of heavy rain and the use of the storm overflow: we will see.
Bathing Water Profile for Sandgate Granville Parade.
Bathing Water Profile for Seabrook Beach.
Until May 2026, according to Environment Agency summer water question testing, Sandgate has excellent bathing water quality. However these tests are actually conducted currently at Seabrook, 1.7km from the main Granville Parade beach most people would know as “Sandgate”, and now officially designated as “Seabrook Beach”.
You can see recent quality check results – they are marked as “Excellent” for 2025, 2024, 2023, and 2022.
https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/profile.html?site=ukj4208-13400
https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/data-samples.html?bw=ukj4208-13400#current
The tests are done to check compliance with standards set in the Bathing Water Directive. The Directive sets limits for a number of substances, and all countries in the EU have to ensure their popular beaches meet these standards.
