According to eyewitness phoning the Jeremy Vine show yesterday lunchtime the powers that be were on the beach turning the timber into mulch and then spreading it around. The coastguard was there whilst timber was being gathered by beachcombers and were looking relaxed about the whole thing.

Surely it makes sense to let people take and reuse wood that's simply being turned into chippings - after all people will chop down more trees if they don't recycle the timber.

I frequently go fossil collecting on the south coast and after the last timber spillage planks were all over the shore for months after. I didn't take any (as I was more interested in dinosaurs) but if I had, would I have been guilty of theft? No-one was clearing it up.