The declining UK seaside town that will soon have no beach

A declining seaside town will soon have no beach, a former Lib Dem MP has claimed.

Southport, in Merseyside, has a sandy beach stretching 22 miles beside the town, but recent studies suggest this may be about to disappear.

Levels of sand have been slowly rising on the beach, which may sound positive but actually increases the growth rate of vegetation and can lead to the destruction of the shoreline.

Sefton Lib Dem councillor John Pugh – MP for Southport until his retirement in 2017 – said the increasing sand could make the beach into an “inaccessible” mud terrain instead.

He told the : “Nature is being allowed to take her course and that could mean the total greening of the Southport foreshore or letting it become an inaccessible mudflat plain – good for birds but not for holidaymakers.

“It’s a great shame as the attraction of a beach is that it’s one of the few places families can have fun without spending much money.”

Pugh has said he will submit a motion at a full council meeting arguing that the ruling Labour group had left the beach to nature “by default and not by decision”. He added that he believed policies of trying to preserve a leisure beach south of the pier had been “quietly dropped”.

Sefton Council said it would reserve comment until after the meeting, but a spokesperson said the Sefton coastline had been subject to the natural process of accretion since the Victorian era.

Southport became a popular seaside resort in the 1700s, with Lord Street even said to have been an inspiration for Napoleon to commission the Champs-Elysees in Paris after he visited in 1838.

However, the town has seen a decline in recent years with a number of stores and restaurants shutting in the centre and the nearby Pontins shutting.

The pier, which is the second-longest in the UK, has been closed since 2022. Works to restore it are yet to start, with costs predicted to hit £13 million.