A WORKINGTON business owner has spoken out after waste has been dumped at a site in the town.

Dave Straughton, who runs Just Grind MMA and Fitness Centre, called the area on Isabella Road an "eyesore".

The site had previously been used by Mr Straughton as an outside gym and was popular with dog walkers and bird watchers.

Mr Straughton said that concrete blocks had been erected and waste had been dumped after travellers left the site a couple of weeks ago.

He said: "Where the gates were, they’ve put concrete blocks there. Behind that there’s a great big concrete platform and on top of all that there’s lots of rubbish.

"There’s soil, car wheels, bits of spiky fence sticking out of the rubble. There’s mounds and mounds of it."

With gyms being closed during the lockdowns, Mr Straughton decided to use the site for training.

He said: "I coached loads of sessions at Isabella Road. We had a bunch of stuff there.

"Some tractor tyres, some big stones that we brought up from the shore, some beer kegs. Some people were pinching bits of it but it is what it is.

"While we were we kept it tidy, we did litter pick-ups and it’s actually quite a nice place.

"It gets loads of fly-tipping and things like that, but there’s a lot of wildlife and a lot of nature there."

He added that various members of the public would use it, including dog walkers and bird watchers.

He said: "A lot of them are quite old. They’re not going to be able to [use the site] now.

"It’s just a massive inconvenience for anyone who wanted to use the area. I worked there all day sometimes during lockdown.

"The amount of dogwalkers that you'd see there was unbelievable.

"Like I say, it’s one of the few places for some sort of wildlife in town.

"It’s just inaccessible now. And it looks disgusting. It looks like a landfill.

"It’s not like it was some beautiful nature spot, but it was important. It was on our doorstep and people would go down just to look at the wildlife."