Criticism has been levelled at the council over the handling of the Bournemouth beach situation by prominent Conservative councillors and an MP.

In a statement yesterday, Conor Burns, MP for Bournemouth West said: “The scenes we have witnessed over the last two days that have drawn national attention risk Bournemouth being known for all the wrong reasons.”

He said the situation was ‘too predictable’.

The statement came as BCP declared a major incident on Thursday, after thousands of people flocked to the area causing gridlock and overcrowding.

Mr Burns said the council had “utterly failed to learn the lessons from the recent bank holiday.

“Illegal parking is rife with scant enforcement, some of our more selfish second home owners have returned and the beaches are packed.

“We should have been much better prepared for this and the messaging should have been stronger and clearer. The buck for this stops firmly at the door of the Town Hall.”

Nearly 560 enforcement fines were issued on Wednesday and into Thursday.

Cllr Philip Broadhead, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group and Shadow Portfolio Holder for Tourism said: “As one of the UK’s premier tourist resorts, we are used to a large influx of visitors. The volume of people we are seeing is nothing that would normally cause major concern. What is of major concern, however, is the Council’s response. Despite all the warning signs, the Council appear to have been caught inexplicably off guard by what is, by all accounts, a busy couple of days at the beach.

Why were there no extra bin collections? Why do some car parks remain closed? The Council were unprepared for the last Bank “The Liberal Democrat Council Leader, Vikki Slade, has blamed the Government, the Police and everyone else. She’s even asked people to come back next month when “we’ll be ready”. But we should have been ready now. The Leader needs to stop blaming others and put clear plans in place for what are, in any other years, manageable levels of visitors. This is simply not good enough.”Holiday weekend. That was possibly excusable. This isn’t.”

Lockdown rules will be eased further come July 4.

Speaking yesterday, BCP Council leader Vikki Slade said: “We are not in a position to welcome visitors in these numbers now or to deal with the full range of problems associated with managing volumes of people like this. PLEASE do not come. We are not able to welcome you yet.”

As part of the major incident statement, Assistant Chief Constable Sam de Reya, of Dorset Police, said: “These are unprecedented times and we are urging people to stay away from the area of Bournemouth Beach and other Dorset beaches.

“Clearly we are still in a public health crisis and such a significant volume of people heading to one area places a further strain on emergency services resources.

“This influx of visitors to our area places a significant increase in demand on our service and we would ask people to please bear with us. “We would therefore stress again that we are asking people to please stay away from the area.”