Visitors to a west Dorset beach have been using it as a toilet and leaving piles of dirty toilet paper behind.

The car park at the end of Buller's Way in Abbotsbury is part of the Ilchester Estate, who claim the relaxation of the lockdown restrictions has led to "unprecedented levels of littering and human defecation" in the area.

Steve Cullen, 62, lives in Weymouth and has been visiting the beach at Abbotsbury for years. He said that the area is sadly no longer a beauty spot, it is now a toilet.

"There is human excrement everywhere and nobody seems to do anything about it," he said. "It gets reported but nothing ever happens and locals are fuming about it.

"It is absolutely disgusting, there's dirty toilet paper blowing around in the car park and it's absolutely everywhere. This problem is getting worse and worse every year and it is supposed to be a nature reserve and in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) but you wouldn't believe it.

"There are loads of signs saying no overnight parking and no camping on the beach but there's tents everywhere. People camp for a week at a time on the beach and you see them have a toilet tent too, then when they leave they just bury all of it in the shingle.

"We go down all the time and we've been going there for years but it's not a nature reserve anymore - it's a toilet."

A spokesman for Ilchester Estates, said: "Following the relaxation of the lockdown restrictions, Chesil Beach like many other coastal attractions has been inundated with visitors this summer. This in turn has led to unprecedented levels of littering and human defecation both on the beach itself and nearby.

"As managers of this section of Chesil Beach we have put procedures in place to manage increased volumes of visitors and associated litter and have implemented a robust cleaning regime for the onsite toilets for the welfare of the visitors and our staff and contractors.

"Due to the increased cleaning requirements and compliance we are unable to keep the toilets open 24 hours a day but unfortunately visitors still continue to use the beach for multiple days at a time, with very little consideration as to toilet facilities. We have been employing a specialist cleaning company to deal this human waste on a regular basis and have provided numerous bins for the litter but unfortunately the beach continues to be abused by an unprecedented number of visitors.

"We acknowledge that this seems to be a nationwide problem but a continuing lack of consideration by a number of the visitors to Chesil Beach is disappointing."

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