THE 114 people who own waterside beach huts at Hamworthy, Poole, are being hit with a near doubling of their rent.

Borough of Poole is hiking the charges at Hamworthy Park from £164 a year to £295. And the four owners at Branksome Chine face a rise from £318 to £495.

"That's absolutely disgraceful. They really can't justify that," said Hamworthy resident Fred Winwood, who bought his hut in 1955 when the rent was £5 a year.

As well as maintaining their huts owners pay business rates and water charges, he said, and described this rise as an unfair stealth tax on local people.

Proceeds from the rent should be spent to improve facilities in the park, he said.

"In Hamworthy Park there are two toilets for all these huts and on Bank Holidays you can have 1,000 people down there. It's been like that for years," he said.

There are 1,150 beach huts in the borough - another 62 are being constructed at Shore Road - most of which are rented from the council at a cost of around £1,000 a year.

"We can't have extremely high costs in some and not in others," said Cllr Peter Adams, portfolio holder for leisure.

He said: "We decided to do some equalisation which does incur some quite high increases in Hamworthy and Branksome.

"We are talking £6 a week to rent a beach hut on a beautiful beach in Hamworthy - it was £3 a week.

"That's not a lot of money to have that facility."

The decision has been made by Clive Smith, head of leisure, under delegated powers and after consultation.

He said: "It is partly about balancing budgets for next year and partly about making some money to improve the park."

He said the charges would still be lower than neighbouring authorities when they were increased.

"There is a lot going on in the park and there's going to be more," he said, pledging that some of the money would go towards improvements.