Community and environmental groups as well as the wider public are being asked to take part in a six-week consultation over changes to bathing water rules.

Among the proposals, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) wants to remove fixed dates for the bathing water season.

This would be a significant development as there is no site monitoring for harmful bacteria beyond the bathing water season, which runs from the middle of May to September.

According to an unpublished government report mentioned by The Times newspaper, there is evidence that water quality plunges during the winter months.

Giles Bristow, chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage, was quoted in The Times, saying “sewage ain’t seasonal”.

Local authorities and businesses, including farmers, have also been invited to take part in the consultation, which Defra has hailed as the “first shake up in over a decade”.

The proposals include a move to introduce multiple testing points at bathing water sites, expand the legal definition of ‘bathers’ to include paddle boarders and surfers, and to end the automatic de-designation of bathing water status if a site is rated ‘poor’ for five consecutive years.

Mark Lloyd, chief executive of The Rivers Trust, welcomed the reforms. He said: “We are particularly pleased to see the ending of automatic de-designation for waters which failed to meet standards after five years.

“We will be urging ministers to make the new system more transparent and to include a wider range of pollutants that can cause risks to public health. We hope that applications for new designations can open again in the Spring without any further delay.”

Ben Seal, head of access and environment at Paddle UK, on behalf of the Clean Water Sports Alliance, said: “Access to clean, healthy, nature-rich blue spaces is crucial to the health and wellbeing of millions of people around the UK.

“We are a water sports nation, however, as a result of the sewage scandal, the public have become increasingly fearful of getting sick, doing the activity they love.”

According to a recent Environment Agency (EA) bathing water report, the South Hams was listed as one of the cleanest areas when it comes to bathing water quality.

In May this year, four new monitored bathing sites in the South Hams, all on the River Dart Estuary (Warfleet, Dittisham, Stoke Gabriel and the Steamer Quay in Totnes), were added to a list of the country’s wild swimming areas.

But according to the Top of the Poops monitoring site, the River Dart ranked fourth in a list of areas with the most sewage spills in the South West last year, totalling 1,458 – representing an average of four times a day, which it attributed to spills caused by South West Water.

It also revealed that South Devon as a whole was polluted by sewage 5,637 times in 2023, adding that monitoring “was disabled in some locations”.

The consultation ends on December 23.

The Friends of the Dart community group has been asked to comment on the proposals.