Our battle with rubble and building material continued today with the help of staff from the Regent Cinema. Neil Bates, the Regent cinema manager, joined us after just recently recovering from a heart attack. We’d like to thank him and the 20 volunteers who turned out to remove 15 bags of beach litter. The group then turned their attention to building materials and created another mound of around 5 tonnes of rubble.
The beach area between the Beacon and the Regent has certainly seen better times. While trying to clear half buried materials we couldn’t believe that we were digging up clay, mud and building gravel just below the sand. In fact the whole area is no longer fit for sunbathing and aesthetically displeasing.This is a lot to do with the dissipating sand year on year not being replaced when the Tees mouth is dredged.
The disabled access in this area is covered in sand and debris. If a wheelchair user did want to use this ramp they would get stuck at the bottom as there is a drop in the pathway creating a barrier to the beach. The design here is wrong and needs to be rethought.
Aside from this there is an immovable and jagged broken sewage outlet and pointed broken debris sticking up out from the sand. Building fabrics and felts are also half buried and impossible to shift without heavy equipment. We need diggers down here to clear the buried rubbish. It is unsafe and unusable and nothing short of dangerous. We would recommend closing this area until it was made safe.
We fully expect the Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to come and collect the piles of rubble but even their teams have been complaining about access to the beach now. We created a huge pile of masonry at the beginning on February – It’s still there!
What do we need to do to get a solution? – Apply for funding to hire out our own JCB, skips and clearance teams? We want a clean, safe, usable beach. You’d naturally think the council would want that too, following all the money spent on regeneration. Recently the tourist information outlet has been closed. This is all bad for business and makes little sense.
We are ten months on from first bringing the issues of the beach to everyone's attention directly after Balfour Beatty had finished building the Coastal Defence. We have sent numerous emails every month, sent hundreds of photos, had meetings and have continually shouted about the problem. Where are we at? It's anyone’s guess.
Thank's once again to all our fantastic volunteers. You guys are the difference.
