All swimming spots › Folkestone and Hythe, England
Can I swim at Littlestone?
Folkestone and Hythe, England · Coastal
Checking…
Before you get in
A red flag means do not go in, whatever this page says.
If you get into trouble, float on your back until the cold shock passes. Full advice below.
In an emergency call 999 and ask for the Coastguard, or 112 in the Republic of Ireland.
Water quality today
The last fortnight
What this verdict covers
Independent site, not an official one. This verdict is about water quality. It does not tell you whether the water is safe to get into today.
How it has been rated
The annual classification for 2021 to 2025. Each one is calculated from samples taken over up to four bathing seasons, so these overlap and none of them describes today.
Every sample, 2024 to 2026
45 samples, 2024 to 2026. The highest E. coli count in them was 4,700 per 100ml, on 18 September 2025; the standard for Excellent is 250 or below and for Good 500 or below.
One bar for each sample, oldest on the left. The taller the bar, the more E. coli that bottle held.
The scale is the same on every beach on this site, which is why a clean beach looks flat — the bars are measured against the standard rather than against that beach’s own worst day. Hover or tap a bar for that day’s figures. A single count over a line is not a failed beach. The classification is worked out as the 90th and 95th percentile of four years of samples, so one bad morning does not decide it — and one good morning does not either. 6 of these are above the Good standard, so they are pinned to the top with a notch rather than the chart stretching to fit them.
What these bacteria mean for you
Neither one is what makes people ill by itself. They are markers: they live in the gut, so finding them means sewage or animal waste has reached the water, and whatever else came with it is likely there too.
The usual way to catch something is swallowing the water, and the usual result is a stomach upset. Ear, eye, chest and skin infections are the other common ones. Putting your head under and swimming with an open cut both raise the odds.
The riskiest time is the day or two after heavy rain, when storm overflows discharge and rain washes off farmland — including at beaches rated Excellent for the rest of the season. That is the whole reason this page shows you rainfall and discharges alongside the grade.
Littlestone was rated Poor for 2025, below the minimum standard, based on samples taken across recent seasons. That grade comes from bacterial samples taken over several seasons rather than from the water today — but a Poor rating does not only describe the past. Advice against bathing is posted at a Poor bathing water for the whole season, which is why it sets the verdict at the top of this page every day until the season closes.
The Environment Agency issues a pollution risk forecast each morning during the bathing season for nearly every bathing water in England, and the water company publishes the status of its storm overflows every few minutes.
The rest of its file
What the regulator holds for this place. None of it describes the water today.
- Water
- Coastal
- Area
- Folkestone and Hythe, England
- Monitored outfalls within 5km
- 2 (nearest 0.7km)
Sea, wind, tide and weather
The sea and the weather here today and for the week ahead. Not the water quality verdict above.
Today
Rain, the week behind and ahead
The weather for the week ahead
Where it is, and what discharges near it
Directions to this bathing water
That is the Environment Agency’s sampling point, which is at the water rather than at a car park. Your maps app will take you to the nearest road it can reach.
The nearest mapped car park is about 120m away in a straight line. That is not a walking distance: OpenStreetMap knows where the car park is and nothing about the path, which may be longer, steeper or not there at all. It is tagged as charging a fee, as the mappers wrote it.
What is mapped at this beach
- Toilets about 320m away
- Drinking water about 480m away
Straight-line distances from OpenStreetMap, not walking distances, and only what volunteers have mapped — something missing here may still be there.
Getting here without a car
- Nearest bus stop Clark Road (opp), Grand Parade, about 110m away
Straight-line distances to where the stop or station is, from the national registers of them. That a stop exists is not a promise that a bus calls at it — timetables are somebody else’s data and this page does not read them, so check the operator before you rely on it.
The record since 2021
In 2025, the 2 monitored overflows the Environment Agency lists against this bathing water spilled 2 times, for about 28 hours in total. Over the 2025 bathing season alone, 1 May to 30 September, 0 of those spills happened — 0% of the year.
- 202113 spills · 158 hours
- 202233 spills · 564 hours
- 202346 spills · 852 hours
- 202425 spills · 366 hours
- 20252 spills · 28 hours
These are annual totals for the whole year, not readings from today — today’s answer is the verdict at the top of the page. Figures come from the Environment Agency’s Event Duration Monitoring annual returns, which the water companies submit and the EA publishes, and the EA decides which overflows count as belonging to this bathing water.
What the regulator says about this beach
From the Environment Agency’s published bathing water profile for 2026. It describes the place and its catchment, not today’s water.
The beach itself
Littlestone-on-Sea is a resort beach in the middle of a 20 kilometre (km) stretch of beach in Hythe Bay, Kent. Hythe Bay stretches from Folkestone down to the headland of Dungeness. The bathing water is a steeply shelving shingle bank with sand dunes at the southern edge. Wide shallow sand and mud flats are exposed at low tide, resulting in a long distance to the sea. Fine sediments suspended in the water column leave the water cloudy at times.
What drains into it
The drainage catchment surrounding the bathing water is approximately 1200 hectares. It is formed of the towns of New Romney, Littlestone-on-Sea and Greatstone-on-Sea, and the surrounding New Romney Marshes with a network of drainage ditches. The New Romney Main Sewer drains into the sea through an outfall pipe to the north of the bathing water. Discharges from a 1 km long drainage ditch, which receives effluents from New Romney sewage treatment works, gets pumped onto the beach via an outfall pipe 200 metres south of the bathing water sampling point.
More from the profile
Where the sewage works discharges
New Romney sewage treatment works, which receives ultraviolet disinfection treatment, discharges into an approximately 1 km long marsh drainage ditch. The water in the ditch gets pumped onto the beach. The outfall is located 200 metres south of the sampling point, near the life boat pier. The discharge is designed to protect bathing water compliance.
What has been done about it
Ultraviolet disinfection was installed at New Romney sewage treatment works in 1992 and upgraded in 1999. The effluent drains into a marsh drainage ditch which then discharges across the beach just south of the bathing water. This discharge is designed to protect bathing water compliance. A scheme to provide New Romney, Greatstone-on-Sea and the nearby Lydd-on-Sea with mains drainage for the first time was completed in 2007. Hundreds of properties served by private drainage facilities (including cesspools and septic tanks) can now be connected to the main sewer network. The wastewater goes to New Romney sewage treatment works. Better treatment at the nearby Hythe sewage treatment works was installed in 2001, which discharges via a long sea outfall into the north of Hythe Bay. This improved quality within Hythe Bay, which stretches from Folkestone down to the headland of Dungeness. In 2016, Southern Water undertook an investigation of the sewer integrity in the Littlestone Sewerage catchment. This included sewer cleaning and CCTV surveys. No sewer sections were identified as requiring rehabilitation. Under the programme of works for Southern Water (from 2020 to 2022) investigations within the catchment were carried out. This has helped to identify where bathing water improvements may be needed in the future.
What the samplers see on the sand
Environment Agency samplers make observations of litter present on the beach at every visit, this includes assessments of sewage debris, litter and tar. At Littlestone for the four year (2022-2025) assessment period where data is available, sewage debris was not noted at this site. Litter was assessed as being sufficient to be objectionable for 2% of visits, with 72% of visits noting the presence of litter. Tarry residue was not noted at this site.
The council's part
A partnership group has been created with the Environment Agency, Folkestone - Hythe District Council and Southern Water to investigate ways to improve the bathing water.
Published by the Environment Agency under the Open Government Licence. The full profile carries more, including sections repeated for every beach that are not reproduced here.
Other swimming spots nearby
The closest bathing waters on the regulators’ lists, straight-line distance. Each has its own checks and its own verdict.
Check the official source
The regulator’s own page for this bathing water. If it disagrees with this one, believe theirs.
Littlestone's official page at the Environment Agency · See it on a map
This page is not official. It reads published data and presents it plainly; if a sign at the beach says otherwise, believe the sign.
If you get into trouble
This is the RNLI’s advice, not ours.
Float. Tilt your head back with your ears in the water. Relax and let your breathing settle. Move your hands and legs gently to stay level. Your legs may sink, and that is fine, everyone floats differently. The first shock of cold water passes in less than a minute, so do not try to swim straight away. Once it has passed, call for help or swim to safety.
Caught in a rip current? Do not swim against it, you will only tire yourself out. If you can stand, wade out of it. If the water is too deep to stand, swim parallel to the beach until you are clear of it, then head for shore. Raise your hand and shout for help.
Nobody publishes a rip current forecast for beaches in Britain or Ireland, so this site cannot show you one. The RNLI has one for its own lifeguards. The public does not. Look at the water before you get in, and look for a channel where the waves are not breaking.
In an emergency call 999 and ask for the Coastguard. In the Republic of Ireland call 112 or 999 and ask for the Coast Guard.
Where there are lifeguards, swim between the red and yellow flags. They put those flags where it is safest that day and move them as the sea changes. A red flag means do not go in, whatever this page says. An orange windsock means the wind is blowing offshore and inflatables should stay out of the water. Most places on this site have no lifeguard at all.
This advice is the RNLI’s. Their Float to Live pages are worth two minutes of anyone’s time.
Use this page elsewhere
One sheet of A4 with a QR code to this page, for a clubhouse, a campsite reception, a surf school or a harbour office. The address is printed underneath in words, so it still works for anybody who would rather not scan a code.
Print a sign for LittlestoneOr put today’s verdict on your own site.
Put this beach on your own site
A small card showing today’s verdict for Littlestone, updating itself. Paste this where you want it to appear. It loads nothing of yours and sets no cookies, and it costs your visitors about ten kilobytes, most of it the readings themselves.
Click the box to select it all. There is also a feed for this beach, if you would rather be told than have to look.