Push for bathing water quality hailed as 'game changer' for UK rivers

Environment Agency boss calls for more funding to help public embrace wild swimming

Growing pressure to clean up Britain's rivers to meet bathing water quality is a "game changer" that will require more government funding as the public embrace the outdoors, the head of the Environment Agency has said.

A growing number of river users are calling for action to tackle the routine and legal discharge of untreated sewage into Britain's waterways, which they say amounts to treating them like an open sewer.