A landslide at a popular beach in Newquay has left some beach huts at the site buried.

A section of the cliffs collapsed at Lusty Glaze beach on Monday the 5th of March at approximately 4 PM following a brief period of cold over the previous days. Nobody was injured, and a section of the beach has been cordoned off as a clean-up operation is dealing with the rubble.

A digger on-site cleaning up the rubble

A representative for the beach posted about the landslide on Twitter the next morning, humorously stating “So mother nature decided to pay us a visit yesterday!”, attaching a picture of the immediate effects of the collapse.

The landslide at Lusty Glaze is the fourth to happen along the Cornish coast this year, some of the others occurring at Looe, Mullion Harber and Porthleven. In the past 4 years, over 3 landslides have occurred at Newquay alone.

One of these previous incidents also took place at Lusty Glaze, but no damage was done as all of the rubble collapsed onto the beach, avoiding any manmade constructions. Despite this, locals are worried that new buildings may weaken the granite of the cliffs further.

One local said: “There’s a lot of planning permission going in for hotels and all sorts [along the coast]”, noting that such construction could potentially weaken the granite cliffs. She went on to say that the council are planning to hold a meeting later in the year to see if there’s “anything to be done” about the issue along the Cornish coast.

There are currently over 36 hotels in Newquay, approximately 1/3 of which lie along the coastline.

“It’s a shame for the owners,” another local told TruthFal. “It’ll probably affect the business a lot.”

The beach can be rented out as a venue for weddings

When asked about whether the council could be doing more to prevent incidents such as this, he expressed doubt, asking where the funding for a coast-long reinforcement operation would come from.

Cornwall’s coast is approximately 1000 kilometers long, making it the longest coastline out of any county in England.

In March 2013, a woman was killed after a landslide engulfed her flat in Looe. Cornwall Council came under fire 3 years later in 2016 when an inquest jury concluded that they should have known she faced “a real and immediate risk of death”, and that it had not acted on warnings from residents.