Spider on lavender

The garden seems to be full of spiders at the moment weaving webs all over the place. This is one of the prettier ones  - there are dozens like this on the lavender. Perhaps it's some kind of orbweaver? I don't whether it's a pest or not. Some of them are catching and wrapping up various small much less attractive insects.
 
A relatively warm day today.  I did quite a bit of strimming in the garden,  and had a good swim at our local beach, which was quite crowded.