Lynemouth beach colliery waste £7.5m clean-up revealed

Pipes and cables have been found on Lynemouth beach after erosion at a former landfill site

About £7.5m is to be spent clearing toxic colliery waste from a Northumberland beach.

Old mining pipes and cables have been littering the beach at Lynemouth after the cliffs at a former colliery landfill site started crumbling.

Northumberland County Council said tests on beach samples had revealed some waste could be harmful to humans.

A spokesman said the clean-up, to stop polluted sand ending up in the sea, would begin in 2021.

The council said despite small contaminated areas the beach posed a "low" threat to health

A spokesman said samples from small areas of the beach had been found to be contaminated, and that the risk to the public was "low".

Councillor Glen Sanderson said: "It's unfortunate we have this pollution on our beautiful coastline, but this is an historic legacy from our mining past, and we can't allow this material to wash into the sea as the cliffs are eroded."

He said contaminated areas of the beach would be excavated, removed and replaced with earth and sand to make dunes.

The council said that volunteer litter-picking groups needed to stop what they were doing, and allow council officials do the clean-ups for "the foreseeable future".