Nine out of the ten holiday beaches on the North Yorkshire coast have been given the thumbs-up under the European Union sea bathing regulations.

The beach at Reighton has been designated as "excellent", following this year's samples of sea water, while those at Filey, Cayton Bay, Scarborough North and South Bays, Robin Hood's Bay, Whitby, Sandsend and Runswick Bay, have been labelled as "good".

The one failure, at the picturesque fishing village of Staithes, is blamed on pollution going into the village beck, which flows into the sea.

Roy Ayrton, Scarborough Council's director of environmental health said "The bathing water results at Staithes have regularly been unsatisfactory and a further failure this year, while regrettable, is no surprise. It is clear that failures of the EU bathing water quality directive standards have a relationship with the pollution which enters Staithes beck as well as the unsatisfactory outfall."

However the problem is set to be improved with the completion shortly of Yorkshire Water's waste water treatment scheme at the fishing village. The current multi-million pound sewage schemes at Scarborough, Filey, Whitby, and Robin Hood's Bay will further improve the micro-biological quality of effluents discharged into the sea as a result of disinfection processes being incorporated into each project he said. A total of 20 samples were taken from each location.