FRUSTRATED beach hut owners who are to be 'forced out' of their properties to make way for an Environmental Innovation Hub have launched a petition calling for more cooperation from BCP Council.

Owners of the 11 beach huts near the lifeguard centre at Durley Chine were first told in March that they needed to vacate their huts by the end of August to allow work on the £2.4million eco hub to get under way.

However, the tenants are angry the council was not willing to provide a different site for their beach huts, and was not prepared to give special compensation for them to jump the standby list for beachside shacks.

Stuart Smith, who uses his father in law’s hut at Durley Chine, said: “They have told all the beach hut owners to remove their huts by the end of August this year.

“They will not give an alternative location or even put us on a new waiting list.

“We waited 13 years on a list to get it and now after a few years they throw you out, they can’t treat their tax paying local residents like this.

“I want them to change their decision and provide us with an alternative location and not just fob us off and ignore their residents.”

Having written to the council suggesting a new site for his beach hut, Stuart received a response declining the proposal.

Since then he has had little or no response from the council, he said, leading him to set up the online petition to express his frustration.

Stuart said: “The reason I have set up the petition was to show the BCP council that they can’t keep treating locals like this.

“I think they are just holding back until August 31 when we have to remove the hut, so they don’t have to deal with it or us.

“We have actually found a site where our hut could go.

"But they still won’t budge as they have hundreds of people wanting, so they don’t care.”

The council says it has offered the owners of the 11 beach huts the option of moving to a council-owned hut in the Bournemouth West area, and offered to pay them £250 for their beach hut if they no longer want it.

A BCP Council spokesperson said: “Beach hut tenants were informed of this in March 2020 allowing them five months to plan alternative arrangements if they wished to do so before the end of August 2020.

“We understand that this has caused frustrations for some tenants and as an act of goodwill we are being flexible over the payment of this year’s invoices.

“In order to ensure our approach is consistent, fair and complies with our beach hut management policy, both to the 11 affected beach hut tenants and to those who are currently on a beach hut waiting list, we are unable to allocate 11 new spaces along the seafront or place them at the top of the waiting list.

“We will continue to directly communicate with the tenants on any questions or queries they may have on the situation.”