A PARISH council will resubmit an application for a section of Coniston Water that is popular with swimmers to have designated bathing water status. 

Coniston Parish Council applied to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) last year for bathing water status but narrowly missed out. 

If an area of water has this status the government acknowledges that it is regularly used for swimming and the Environment Agency (EA) is under an obligation to test it in the summer months. 

The council is hosting a public consultation on September 27 about gaining bathing water status for a section of water extending from the Bluebirds cafe towards Monk Coniston. They will need to submit an application by the end of October.

As part of the process to gain the status they will need to provide the results from the consultation and a survey of how many people used the lake to swim over a two-day period. 

Tracey Coward, the chair of the parish council, said: "Having designated bathing water status puts responsibility on the EA to monitor the water. We don't want to say that Coniston is a dirty lake. Windermere has gone heavily on the 'it's a dirty lake, it's polluted,' we don't want to do it from a negative perspective. 

READ MORE: Clean River Kent Campaign has bathing area application denied

"It's obvious to anybody that goes to the lakes on a hot sunny day there are lots of people bathing.

"All we have to do is evidence that a large number of bathers are using it. We have been engaging with Defra and the EA and everyone." 

Cllr Coward said the application is easier than before in that the two-day sample period of swimmers is much shorter than the previous 20-day period the council had to supply previously. 

However she also said that the weather has been much wetter this year than last year, meaning fewer tourists have come to the area to swim. 

When Defra denied Coniston Water and the River Kent's bathing water status application earlier this year it said that it looks at factors like how many people bathe there, if the site has suitable facilities such as toilets and if measures are being taken to promote bathing in those waters.