CONTROL of riverside beauty spot Pin Mill could be given back to the people who live and work there in a bid to clear up its eyesore wrecks.Representatives of local groups, boat yard owners, the National Trust, Associated British Ports, the parish council and Babergh and Ipswich councils have met at a conference hosted by Suffolk County Council.

CONTROL of riverside beauty spot Pin Mill could be given back to the people who live and work there in a bid to clear up its eyesore wrecks.

Representatives of local groups, boat yard owners, the National Trust, Associated British Ports, the parish council and Babergh and Ipswich councils have met at a conference hosted by Suffolk County Council.

The outcome was general support for setting up some kind of charitable trust to take over management and control of the Pin Mill Hard and surrounding area from Ipswich Borough Council.

Concern has been growing about the number of wrecks that have been dumped and left to rot on the foreshore and about the general state of the area.

Jake Cleyndert, chairman of a volunteer group, the Pin Mill Hard Fund, said forming a charitable trust would take some time because of the complexities of ownership.

Ipswich Borough Council owns the land between high and low water marks, Associated British Ports also has jurisdiction over the deep water channel and moorings and Babergh District Council is the local planning authority.

Mr Cleyndert said: "It will mean we will have some authority and we can act on our own behalf. But I think the main problem is to get one of the authorities to back us properly. At the moment we don't have the proper authority to go up to people who are dumping wrecks and ask them to move them but I do think we are moving forward and it will happen within the next two years."

He said he believed the current state of the hard and the increasing numbers of wrecks were deterring sailing visitors coming in from Europe, particularly Holland: "The yachting fraternity knows about Pin Mill but they are deterred by the mess down there at the moment."

Tony Ward, Pin Mill's former harbourmaster and owner of a large number of moorings licensed by ABP said the mess might be part of the problem, but also the change in the nature of the yachting fraternity accounted for fewer bookings.

He said: "I think it's a wider ranging issue than the fact of the wrecks on the foreshore. Certainly the place is a mess there's no getting away from that. But people who come over from Holland these days tend to go into marinas.

The major factor is the lack of car parking, he added.