CRW2024_07 Economic, societal and public health benefits of improving water quality at designated bathing waters to a good or excellent standard in Scotland: Literature review

Type of project: Capacity Building

Project status: Project in procurement. Call closed.

Overview: This project aims to provide information on the benefits to the economy, society and public health to improving bathing water quality in Scotland, and the approaches, investment levels, ambition, achievements in other parts of the UK. This information will support the development of a framework approach to understanding and calculating the benefits of improving bathing water quality in Scotland, with an indicative way of calculating these benefits which can be applied to individual sites.

The key questions to be addressed, via review of academic and grey literature, are:

• What factors should be considered when assessing the economic, societal and public health benefits of improving bathing water quality from sufficient to good or excellent?
• What approaches, investment levels, ambition and achievements have been set/achieved in other parts of the UK and EU of improving bathing water quality beyond the sufficient classification, with values where possible, and who set these (Government, Local Authorities Water Companies or other bodies)?
• What cost benefit analysis, or other method of assessing proportional cost, has been used for any decisions worldwide on water quality improvements to support recreational water use?