A warning has been issued after a photo emerged showing youths climbing a 30ft former mine building.

The teenagers can be seen on top of the old Duke Pit fan house, which overlooks Whitehaven harbour.

Now the youngsters are being warned of the serious dangers of their actions.

Whitehaven town councillor Graham Roberts said: “It’s very dangerous. If they came down and injured themselves, there’s no knowing what could happen.

“They could certainly do themselves a lot of damage.

“You could die falling a lot less than 30 feet. If you fall on your head at 10 feet, you could kill yourself.

“Youngsters don’t see the danger that older people do. We all think we are invincible when we’re younger but we’re not.

“I think it may be that the appropriate authority has to make it difficult for people to climb up.”

Russell Dougherty, a Kells resident, who saw the youths climbing the building, said: “I know kids will be kids and getting up to mischief but if one of them falls off the fan house they will get seriously hurt.”

Mayor of Whitehaven, Chris Hayes, said he was also concerned about the youngsters falling off and believes that more needs to be done to engage with them.

He said: “They’re not bad kids. They’re really not.

“All we’re worried about is that they’re safe.

“I was talking to one of these kids the other day. All he said was, ‘I just want to be left alone’.

“I said, ‘what can we do to help you?’ He said, ‘we don’t want anything. We’re quite happy. We just want to do what we do, knock about’.

“When I was younger we crawled along Snebro Gill as children. We were daredevils. We never came to any harm.

“I think we should try and help these kids rather than chastise them. Engage with these kids. Don’t automatically assume they are all being bad.

“I think people are more worried about them coming off there.”

It is understood that the incident was reported to Cumbria Police, however a spokesman for the force said there was no record of it on the logs.

The Duke Pit fan house, dates back to the 19th century and was used to house a fan for ventilating the now disused Duke Pit coal mine.