A west Dorset beach has been criticised for looking like a mess and not a good welcome to the Jurassic Coast.

There has been a steep drop on West Bay’s East Beach for some months now following flood defence works last year but is seems to have got worse with high waves crashing against the beach. This has also uncovered ironwork on the beach.

Steve Attrill, owner of the Watch House Café on East Beach, said the works - which closed the beach for a number of months - and the way the beach is now has disrupted business.

He said: “Half the beach has disappeared and there’s a steep drop at the top of the beach.

“We are asking people to do staycations but it’s like getting to the Grand Canyon and looking down. How people get up and down the beach I will never know.

“It seems crazy as we had such a bad year last year with the beach works and this year were trying to encourage people to go to the beach but you go to the beach and it looks like a right mess. Surely they could have come and remodelled it a bit.

“It’s not great for our business, we had last year’s disruption and now this year the beach does not look brilliant.

“It is such a shame. ‘Welcome to West Bay’ but it does not do it justice. People have seen is in photos and on Broadchurch - it’s like going on holiday and thinking you have a lovely hotel only to get there and find it is a building site.

“They think it is going to be lovely and you get there and find the beach has been excavated and you have all this rusty metal poking up all over the place.”

A member of the Environment Agency’s asset performance team has been to inspect the beach.

They said: “The recent stormy weather - Storm Ellen and Storm Francis - has steepened the front face of East Beach, but the newly buried rock core provides a robust flood defence.

“These natural storm processes have caused the shingle foreshore to become very low. As and when the shingle is brought back to the foreshore, by natural storm processes, we will be able to reshape the front face of the beach.”

A spokesman for Wessex Water has said it has removed some sheet piling that posed a potential health and safety risk when it became exposed due to the sand erosion.

They said: “We’re closely monitoring the area with help from the local community and relevant authorities.”