CROWDS left a Southend beach covered in rubbish after flocking to the seaside for a party in the sunshine.

Residents have expressed their disgust at the state Jubilee Beach was left in on Saturday night.

As well as the usual weekend sunseekers, the beach hosted a Sierra Leone Cultural Day, which has been blamed for the littering.

Mary Wheeler, 33, of Templewood Court, Hadleigh, saw the rubbish after a family day out at the seaside and was disgusted to see the state the beach had been left in.

The mum-of two said: “I was down there with my kids. It wasn’t just left on the beach it was left on the path as well

“There was rubbish everywhere. I was really shocked and my kids were shocked. The bins were half full, there was adequate room for most of the rubbish to be put away. It’s disgusting.

A spokesman for the event said they cleaned up all the rubbish in the section of beach they used and denied leaving any behind.

He said: “The beach was cleaned. We stayed behind and cleaned the section we were at.

“I stayed behind until midnight. We did most of the cleaning. It’s a public beach, there were other people there.”

Seafront trader Martin Richardson, owner of The Happidrome Arcade, was disappointed so much rubbish was left but said the organiser did make an effort to clear some of it.

He said: “We had a huge group from London come for a celebration, basically, they left a lot of rubbish.It seemed to be a breakaway faction that left the rubbish.

“There were rubbish bins provided but a lot of them weren’t used. It’s disappointing to see that people can’t walk five yards or take their rubbish home with them. It just spoilt it. The council could have prepared better.”

Tony Cox, councillor responsible for waste and cleansing, said: “I was shocked and appalled by the huge amount of rubbish left on our beaches by visitors at the weekend. I can only praise the hard work of Veolia staff, who were picking up litter and emptying bins from 6am until 10pm.

“We have 200 bins along our seafront plus a further 50 temporary beach bins that are used on busy days, so there really is no excuse for leaving our beaches in this state. Veolia had an extra staff out at the weekend to deal with the anticipated litter. However, despite our best endeavours, many of the visitors were mindlessly littering our beautiful beaches faster than we could collect it.”

Images of the rubbish were shared thousands of times on Facebook with users expressing their frustration at the littering.

Sarah Primett said: “Visitors to Southend should take more pride in our town. Bet they wouldn’t leave their homes like this.”