Lyme Regis Front Beach
Lyme Regis’ picturesque harbour dates back to the fourteenth century.
Known as The Cobb, it contains a small, sandy beach sheltered by a curving harbour wall.
It’s perfect for fossil hunting.
Overflow locations
The map below shows the locations of the storm overflows that have the potential to impact water quality at this bathing water.
The map shows whether or not a storm overflow is currently active, the time and duration of the last spill at that location, and our investment commitments that are specific to that overflow.
Lyme Regis Front Beach storm overflow map
Water quality sample results
The graphs below show the significant reduction in harmful bacteria in the Environment Agency’s (EA) water samples since the 1990s. E. coli and Intestinal Enterococci exist in all open water - they are found in human and animal poo, and get into the water via sewage spills, road drainage, agricultural livestock, or wildlife and birds. The EA uses the levels of these bacteria to decide whether to award this beach bathing water status.
Investment programme up to 2025
The Cobb pumping station storm overflow was deemed the only overflow that had potential to impact Lyme Regis Front Beach.
Church Cliff beach has now been newly designated as a bathing water and all 7 overflows in Lyme Regis will now be reported against this beach.
We have invested around £2,900,000 including pumping station upgrades, improved the capacity at Uplyme sewage treatment works and around 730m of sewer lining completed in September 2024.
Current investment
A new surface water drainage network is being built to separate surface water that doesn’t require treatment. The new network will be supported by additional storm storage tanks.
Find out more about the ongoing works in Lyme Regis.
5 year overflow spill information
The data shown in the table below is the reported annual total spill number for each overflow which has been identified by the EA for this bathing water.
The assignment of an overflow to the bathing water does not always mean an impact will occur, it can be dependent on a number of factors such as tidal state and weather conditions. Sometimes it has been allocated just for investigation purposes and has no impact at all.
All data collected goes through vigorous quality assurance processes before being included in the counts. Sometimes debris can trigger false spills to be recorded, resulting in potentially higher than actual spill numbers.
Number of spills
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Cobb pumping station overflow, Lyme Regis | 13 | 13 | 9 | 18 | 7 |
More about what we're doing
The beach profiles were created in line with information provided by our partners, Environment Agency, RNLI, Keep Britain Tidy, MCS - Beach Guide and British Beaches.