Our resort has over 9 miles of beaches but only 2 zones are entered for awards at a cost of at least £600 each per year. Only the best beaches, which, as we know, are at Ainsdale, 4 miles from the pier and at our resort’s main tourist beach, are usually entered for awards.
The beaches that are NEVER entered for these coveted accolades are, firstly: North of the pier to Marshside and Crossens, and, secondly, South of the central slipway car access, past Weld Road car parking entrance and well over a mile in the direction of Ainsdale Beach. These poorly kept stretches of Southport’s shoreline have, for years, been strewn with green growth, sea debris and, at one point, liquid sewage is allowed to be discharged onto Birkdale beach.
But Sefton’s administration fails to mention these dirty beaches even though they represent two thirds of our resort’s entire coastline. So, with vagueness being paramount in their thinking, they attempt to “pull the wool over residents’ eyes” by only highlighting the one third of our beaches that are put forward for annual awards.
ENCAMS, the organisation running these national beach awards, inspects over 150 beaches around Britain each year and admits it CANNOT keep its eyes on every stretch of coastline. So it invites local people to report back to them any fall in their local beach standards. Their contact address is ENCAMS, Northern Office, Elizabeth House, The Pier, Wigan, WN3 4EX.
Finally, the removal of 12 million tons of our beach sand from Marshside over the last 32 years and 5 oil and gas rigs off the westerly coastline of Southport which use large amounts of drilling mud, makes us wonder whether these could be contributing to some of our coastal problems. A beach sand replacement scheme similar to that in Morecambe may certainly improve stretches of our own muddy beaches. This should be investigated as a matter of urgency to improve Southport’s own coastline.