COVID-19 rule breakers held a barbecue on the beach triggering an outspoken attack by councillors who branded the move “totally unacceptable”.

The seafront was reportedly packed with people over the weekend with a group hosting a barbecue on Shoebury’s East Beach.

Southend Council has closed all seafront car parks to stop people coming to the seafront and has condemned anyone driving to the area for their daily exercise.

Ron Woodley, cabinet member for transport said: “We have been made aware of reports of people having barbecues on the beach, and this is totally unacceptable.

“We are at a vital stage of the continued fight against the virus, and our NHS is facing unprecedented challenges. The selfish behaviour of some people is astonishing and people need to take responsibility for their actions.

“We took the decision to close all seafront car parks from New Year’s Eve as we were seeing large numbers of people congregating across the entirety of the seafront, including visitors from outside the area and we needed to take this difficult but right decision to deter this behaviour as best we could.”

Neil Matthew, who lives on Leitrim Avenue, Shoebury, has noticed more and more cars parking down residential roads to access the seafront.

He said: “We have cars right the way down our road at the weekend to the point where they’re blocking the road up. The council are shutting off the car parks along the seafront to discourage people going down there and I get that but all it’s doing is pushing cars to places where people can park free of charge.

“If the council want to put parking restrictions on then bring them onto the side roads too and that will work.

“If you go down on the seafront it is absolutely heaving. It was worse than it would be on a really warm day in summer. There were hundreds down there and it’s stopping us from walking down there - it’s just so bad.”

Martin Terry, councillor responsible for community safety, urged people to “stop bending the rules”.

Mr Terry said: “It’s quite clear in the Tier 4 regulations that we should be staying at home and only undertaking essential journeys.

“You shouldn’t be driving from one end of the town to the other to take exercise.

“It’s a problem and we’re working with police who are increasing the amount of fixed penalty notices that they’re issuing to people breaking the rules. We’re urging the police to do that because this virus is very serious. The reason we’ve closed seafront car parks is because we don’t want visitors full stop because that’s going to create a risk for everyone.”