‘ There’s a danger of a lot of businesses going to the wall in our coastal towns.’

I NEVER knew a time when the first glimpse of the sea pounding against Yorkshire’s cliffs, or lapping gently at the beaches, didn’t make my spirits soar.

The excitement of being at the coast is as strong for me now as it was when I was a child. My first proper job was on this great and glorious coastline of ours, and I’ll never forget the elation at being offered it, which was as much about going to live there as it was about getting a career under way.

The coast’s magical ability to raise the spirits has been more important than ever for me these past months, as it must have been for countless others.

For many of us, the sights and sounds, the fresh air, the sheer spaciousness of the vast skies and the sea stretching away to infinity have been the perfect antidote to being cooped up.

Whether strolling along the sands, or putting best foot forward for a longer hike along the clifftops, going there has helped me maintain a sense of perspective about the crisis we’re all going through and visiting the coast has done the same for others.

When it has seemed that there is no end in sight to the restrictions on the normal lives we knew less than a year ago, there’s something about the elemental nature of the coast that is the most powerful of reminders that, some day, all this is going to be over.

It’s early for a new year resolution, but mine is going to be give as much as I can back to the coast by way of thanks. That means spending to support the businesses that depend on visitors, which have suffered so dreadfully this year and face continuing uncertainty. If more us do likewise, holidaying at the coast instead of going abroad once winter is past, it might just save hotels, guest houses, cafes and shops from ruin.

Important though that is to businesses surviving, something else needs to happen. And that’s for our region to bring pressure to bear on the Government to recognise that the blow dealt our seaside towns has been especially cruel because they already had more than enough economic and social problems.

The damage the pandemic has wrought is apparent everywhere. In both Whitby and Scarborough last week, I was saddened to see shops and cafes which have been familiar for as long as I can remember closed, victims of a crisis in which the odds were stacked impossibly high against them.

But the odds were pretty daunting to begin with. I’ve lost count of the number of seaside business owners who have told me over the years how precarious their livings are. A poor summer can make for a winter of worry, and an economic downturn in which visitors have less money to spend on staying or eating out has a disproportionate effect on tourism businesses which are, often as not, small and familyrun.

Recovering from what has happened won’t be easy, not least because the already formidable competition from cheap package holidays is going to get even tougher as tour companies offer huge discounts to get people flying again next year.

There’s a danger of a lot of businesses going to the wall in our coastal towns, and of that not being fully appreciated by the Government as the disaster it would be. These won’t be headline- grabbing announcements, like big companies making thousands of people redundant in one go, but small independents sliding quietly into oblivion. A comprehensive package of support for the coast is long overdue anyway, and it is needed more urgently than ever now.

The seaside that visitors see, full of fun, masks a grimmer reality. Lack of opportunities for young people, high levels of

There’s a danger of a lot of businesses going to the wall in our coastal towns.

unemployment and pockets of severe deprivation lie behind the welcome that the coast lays on for the tourists, the result of historic under- investment.

Seaside towns occupy unenviably high positions in every index of the poorest communities in the country and have been consistently overlooked by successive Governments, which have equated the crowds arriving in summer with prosperity.

But that’s an illusion. Coastal communities have struggled for years, consistently losing out to inland towns when money has been handed out for regeneration.

They deserve a much better deal, not just for their own sake, and in recognition of the hard work of feisty independent businesses, but also as an acknowledgement of how important the seaside is to visitors’ wellbeing.

And that’s reason enough for the Government to join all of us in doing whatever we can to help them remain special places.