Reimagining Water Testing: Why Water Companies Should Partner with the

The water sector in the UK is under enormous pressure. Resource limitations, regulatory burden and increasing public scrutiny mean that traditional water-quality monitoring, driven solely by water companies and the regulators, is struggling to keep up. But what if part of the solution has always been in plain sight: empowering the public to help monitor water quality quickly and daily.

Bactiquick: a simple, reliable real time testing kit that allows individuals and communities to check water quality in about 15 minutes can do this. By putting testing into the hands of the public, water companies have an opportunity to transform water-quality surveillance, reduce cost, expand coverage, and restore public trust.

The Problem: Why the Status Quo Is Broken

Growing capacity shortfalls. The Environment Agency (EA) recently admitted that it has dropped 10,000 water quality tests due to staff and resource constraints. Unearthed
Missed tests and delayed sampling. Under the current system, many pollution incidents go unrecorded. Without frequent, widespread testing, problems emerge only after serious incidents. According to a recent EA-commissioned report, 75 “Category 1 and 2” pollution incidents were recorded in 2024 — a steep rise from 47 the previous year.
Limited temporal coverage. Water-quality checking under the current regime is heavily concentrated in the traditional “bathing water season” (roughly May to September). But in reality, public interaction with rivers, lakes and coasts, swimming, wild swimming, paddle-boarding, kayaking now often happens well outside that window. Indeed, recent consultation proposals from government acknowledge that water-use patterns have changed and that the monitoring regime needs to reflect that.
Public frustration and risk. When testing is sporadic and reactive, public confidence erodes. People feel uncertain about whether the water is safe and risk illness as a result.

The Opportunity: Empowering the Public with Bactiquick

1. Dramatically expand testing coverage at minimal cost

Imagine thousands of communities, local swimming groups, kayak clubs, wild-swimming enthusiasts running quick, same-day water checks before every dip. That’s coverage no water company or regulator could afford using traditional lab-based testing.

A regular, community-based testing regime using Bactiquick could turn water monitoring from a seasonal, limited exercise into a continuous, dense network of “first line” checks.

2. Catch problems early and reduce risk before serious incidents

Daily or weekly checks by the public increase the chance of detecting emerging issues quickly a sudden spike in bacteria, sewage leaks, runoff after heavy rain and prompt water companies to deploy full investigative resources only when needed. That not only protects public health it can save significant operational costs compared with blanket sampling.

3. Build trust and transparency restore public confidence

By giving people the ability to test their own water, water companies can shift from being seen as gatekeepers to being enablers, working with and funding communities. That transparency fosters collaboration, reduces friction, and helps build goodwill.

For the public, knowing they can test water anytime gives peace of mind; for companies, it generates a powerful citizen-led early warning system.

4. Fill the gap outside the traditional bathing season

The current monitoring system focused on the traditional bathing season is increasingly misaligned with how people actually use water bodies. As swimming, wild swimming, paddle-boarding and other water-sports grow popular year-round, the need for water-quality surveillance also never really stops.

By embracing Bactiquick, water companies can implement a year-round, rolling monitoring strategy, complementing but not replacing regulatory tests and significantly improve overall coverage and responsiveness.

What the Facts Say: The Case Is Already Clear

According to the 2025 bathing water classification data for England, 87% of bathing waters reached “Excellent” or “Good” status but that still leaves 13% rated “Sufficient” or “Poor”, meaning they could pose health risks for swimmers or water users.
Given the material drop in EA carried testing 10,000 fewer checks in 2025 alone relying exclusively on the regulatory regime for water-quality assurance is becoming untenable.
The costs both financial and reputational of major pollution incidents are skyrocketing. According to a 2024 industry-wide performance report, many companies are struggling to meet key performance commitments and environmental metrics.

In this context, the marginal cost of distributing Bactiquick Real Time testing kits and the value of investing in a public-enabled monitoring network is small compared to the costs of a major contamination event, public backlash, or long-term reputational damage.

A Vision for the Future: Collaborating to Make Water Safety Everyone’s Business

At Bactiquick believe that water safety and monitoring should no longer be a “top-down” process carried out only by agencies and water companies. Instead, its time to change the culture of water testing.

Pilot community-based testing programmes — working with local communities, wild-swimming groups, councils and water companies to roll out Bactiquick kits.

Use public results as “early-warning signals” — treat community data loaded to the Bactiquick App as triggers: where kits show elevated levels, water companies dispatch full professional assessments.

Complement, don’t replace, regulation — maintain statutory testing (e.g. by the EA) for compliance, while using public-driven testing for continuous, wide-scale monitoring.

Communicate transparently and regularly — water companies publish aggregated community test data alongside their own lab results, making water quality visible to the public. All of Bactiquick’s data for every test is loaded to an app and would be available.

This collaborative model would:

Close the gap between when water becomes polluted and when companies detect it.
Spread the testing burden across communities reducing cost, increasing frequency, improving responsiveness.
Build trust and restore confidence in water companies’ commitment to public health.
Deliver safer water for recreation even outside summer and make water-quality protection a shared responsibility.

The Breakthrough: What Makes Bactiquick Unique

Bactiquick is not a novel test. It is a world-class scientific screening tool built for the real world.

Crucially, Bactiquick tests for the same key bacterial indicators used by water companies and regulators and more. This means:

It aligns with industry-standard microbiological indicators of water contamination
It detects harmful bacteria linked to sewage and faecal contamination
It provides reliable early-warning screening that directly complements laboratory analysis
It delivers results in just 15 minutes, rather than days

This is what makes Bactiquick a world-first with its game changing capability:

Same core bacterial detection as traditional regulatory frameworks
Additional screening capability beyond legacy field tests
Ultra-rapid results
Usable by non-scientists
Deployable every day, anywhere

For the first time, public testing no longer means inferior testing.

It means equivalent microbial screening, at national scale, in real time.

The Opportunity: Turn the Public into a National Early-Warning Network

Imagine if instead of hundreds or even thousands of formal samples per year, the UK generated millions of micro-checks through communities:

Wild swimming groups
Paddle sports clubs
Surfers
Coastal residents
Professional events
Environmental volunteer networks
Schools and citizen science programmes

With Bactiquick, initial screening becomes daily, decentralised and continuous.

Water companies are then only required to deploy full sampling teams when a pattern, anomaly or risk is flagged not reactively, and not months later.

This transforms testing from:

Seasonal → Year-round
Centralised → Distributed
Reactive → Predictive

Financial & Operational Impact for Water Companies

By shifting the model toward public-enabled screening, water companies can:

✔️ Reduce unnecessary site visits
✔️ Lower baseline sampling costs
✔️ Preserve laboratory resources for high-risk escalation
✔️ Improve regulatory confidence through enhanced coverage
✔️ Detect emerging failures earlier, before they become reportable incidents
✔️ Demonstrate leadership in transparency and innovation

One serious pollution event can cost millions in fines, remediation, investigation and lost trust.
By comparison, the cost of enabling nationwide public real time testing is marginal.

Solving the Bathing Season Problem

The historic focus on the “bathing season” no longer reflects reality.

Water is now used year-round for:

Cold-water swimming
Surfing
Kayaking and paddleboarding
Endurance swimming
Triathlon and winter training
Coastal tourism outside peak summer

Yet the public is largely unprotected outside summer months.

With Bactiquick in circulation year-round, water safety becomes continuous — not seasonal.

Trust Is the Real Prize

Right now, many communities feel excluded, sceptical and frustrated. They see:

Delayed responses
Conflicting information
Infrequent testing
Negative Media reports

By enabling people to test water themselves using technology that aligns with professional bacterial indicators water companies can shift from being seen as:

Defensive → Collaborative
Opaque → Transparent
Reactive → Proactive

This is how trust can be rebuilt.

A New Model: Shared Responsibility, Professional Oversight

The future we see is simple:

Public performs ultra-rapid, daily screening using Bactiquick
Abnormal readings trigger professional investigation
Water companies conduct full laboratory analysis where it matters
Regulators retain oversight and statutory classification
Results are shared openly

This is not about replacing professional testing —
It is about making that testing exponentially more powerful through scale.

The Call to Water Company Leaders

The public are asking for you to deliver:

Better environmental performance
Greater transparency
Lower operating costs
Higher customer confidence
Faster incident detection

Bactiquick enables all five.

This is not just a new product.
It is a new operating model and culture for national water testing.

Let’s Change Water Testing — Together

We invite water companies across the UK to:

Trial and fund community-led Bactiquick monitoring
Integrate results into existing water-quality frameworks
Lead the shift toward real-time, year-round, people-powered water protection

This is a rare moment where: