THE quality of Brighton’s beach water has been hailed as “excellent” by environmental experts.

The annual bathing water quality report from the European Environmental Agency shows the quality of the water at the city’s beach is excellent.

It received the highest score available in the report.

This comes just a week after The Argus revealed Brighton and Hove’s beaches missed out on the prestigious Blue Flag award – which recognises the high standards of beaches and marinas – because the city council failed to enter.

Council officers said they were more focused on improving the quality of the beaches rather than applying for awards.

Commenting on quality report, a spokesman from the city council said: “The water here is usually rated excellent.

“It is rare that it dips below that standard and usually only happens when heavy rainstorms wash dirt from the land to the sea.

“During the summer we display the results of testing on notice boards along the seafront so people can be confident of the quality of the water’s quality before they take a dip or a paddle.

“Combined with a clean beach, people can usually be guaranteed a pleasant visit.”

In total 80% of coastal resorts in the UK were found to have an excellent quality of bathing water in 2013.

This is a vast improvement on last year as wet weather blighted the south coast water quality.

A spokesman from Southern Water, which spent billions of pounds improving the quality of the bathing water along the south-east coastline in 2012, said: “As part of our continued commitment to environmental improvement, we recently completed a £300 million wastewater treatment for Brighton and Hove and the surrounding area.”

Mark Burgess, marketing and events manager at Swim Trek, which organises sea swimming events at Brighton beach, said: “Working for Swim Trek we love to swim especially in the sea.

“We find the quality of water in Brighton sea generally of a good standard and being based just a few hundred metres from the beach we can be regularly found having an early morning or lunch time swim in it.”