BOROUGH of Poole’s website crashed yesterday under the strain of thousands of residents signing up to the new beach hut waiting list.

After opening at noon, it took just a few minutes before the site went down due to a large amount of online visitors, leaving Borough of Poole to take to their Twitter page to apologise for the system being ‘unable to cope’.

Within the first hour, the website received 3,448 visits to boroughofpoole.com/beachhuts, which accounted for 25 per cent of all web traffic on the site, said a spokesperson for Borough of Poole.

Cllr Judy Butt, Cabinet portfolio holder for public engagement and participation, Borough of Poole, said: “We knew that reopening Poole’s beach hut waiting list after seven years would be popular but the demand we received at midday was higher than we could have predicted.

“We had almost 3,500 visits to our webpage and unfortunately our systems were unable to cope with this.

“We were able to resolve the issues within 30 minutes.”

It was the first opportunity in seven years for residents to apply for the popular beach huts, with the new waiting list being divided into seven areas, opening with Sandbanks yesterday.

One new area list will then go live every week, including Shore Road, Flaghead, Canford Cliffs, Branksome Chine, Branksome Dene and Hamworthy (for site only), which residents can apply for as many as they wish.

However, some residents disapproved of the fact that they would need to pay £25 to apply for each beach hut area waiting list. To make an application go to boroughofpoole.com, call 01202 708181 or visit the beach offices.

Problems registering...

• Sarah Gow, 43, from Lower Parkstone, said: “I went on the website at around 11.45am and saw the first page, which I filled in, but it was not showing the button to go through to the next page.

“When the site went down, I called Borough of Poole 10 times before I got through, and they said that they couldn’t take details as the system was down.”

• Kevin, 48, from Lower Parkstone, said: “It is the first time that I have applied for the waiting list and I am sure that the old system didn’t require a fee to get on the list.

“It’s a huge amount to pay just for the right of registering.”

• Sam Devlin, 46, from Broadstone, said: “We were very keen to get on the list and for many years it was closed, which was frustrating. We went on the website yesterday, but are specifically hoping to get Branksome Chine.

“The site going down wasn’t too bad, as we were just grateful that the list is open again.

“We were just hoping to get on the list, as we want to make the most of the area we live in.”