A giant countdown clock is on display at Southern Water's operational control centre.

The clock is counting down the days until the Environment Agency's bathing water season begins.

From Thursday, May 15, the agency will start collecting and testing samples from designated bathing waters across the country, including 87 locations along the region's 700 miles of coast.

Southern Water is committed to protecting and enhancing the quality of these waters, and is spending £1 billion a year on environmental improvement over the next five years.

The company is working in partnership with the Environment Agency, councils, landowners, NGOs, and other stakeholders to ensure this investment makes a significant difference.

Bathing water manager Rob Butson said: "The public understand there are many factors which influence bathing water – road and agricultural run-off, wildlife and beach users to name a few.

"But we cannot ask our partners to undertake work to protect and improve water quality unless we can show we’re doing all we can from our side."

In preparation for the start of the season, Southern Water is carrying out extra health checks on 255 of its pumping stations and other infrastructure critical to water quality.

Regular maintenance is part of running a wastewater network with 49,000km of pipes, more than 3,000 pumping stations, and 367 wastewater treatment plants.

At one pumping station visit, worn mechanical parts in the shape of impellers and gaskets were found, indicating the site had been dealing with unusual amounts of 'unflushable' items, such as nappies, sanitary products, and wet wipes.

An expert was quickly sent to fix the issue before it could get worse.

The same teams have been carrying out thousands of metres of CCTV surveys of the networks, to check for leaks and other problems.

Southern Water has also updated its near-real-time storm overflow monitoring service, Rivers and Seas Watch, to keep water users across the south informed about storm overflow impact on water quality.

The latest upgrade introduces improvements based on expert suggestions, including an upgrade to the tidal modelling process to enhance technical accuracy.