Surfers Against Sewage Paddle-Out Protest 2024 in Hastings, East Sussex

This year's Paddle-Outs take place across the UK on May 17 2025.

Transcript

00:00I'm protest lead for Surfers Against Sewage and I don't actually live in Hastings but I come here

00:08a lot on holiday I've got a lot of friends down here and people like Barney and other friends

00:12have been telling me how bad the raw sewage in the sea is and I'm organising this protest with

00:17Barney to say enough is enough there's not enough action being taken it's got to start now and we

00:23just don't want any more sewage in the sea. So what's happening today is it's the Surfers Against

00:27Sewage National Paddle Out so all around the country around coast around the UK and people

00:32are protesting because here with Southern Water it's not everything that it should be by a long

00:38shot but that's the same with lots of water companies around the entire country so we're

00:42just letting people know that we're not happy with things and doing that by way of a protest

00:47a protest important in this country good long history of it and therefore we've got people

00:51going out into the sea and what's called a paddle out where everyone just paddles out you don't

00:55have to be a surfers you could go out on a rubber ring we've got swimmers coming we've got swimmers

00:59paddlers whatever so lots of different people coming and doing a paddle out just to draw attention

01:04to the issue because it is an issue and in particular for this town of Hastings we also

01:09lost our water two weekends ago for a major event here Jack in the Green and that was just disastrous

01:15for business so there's lots of things that could be improved and more sewage in the town centre last

01:19year that wasn't very nice for anybody so yeah we want to end sewage pollution and we want water

01:24companies to take action now to stop sewage pollution it's affecting residents it's affecting tourism and

01:29it's affecting nature as well the marine life all of which is really important