Lifeboats and a rescue team went looking for a seven-year-old girl who went missing from Hemsby beach this afternoon. She was later found safe and well.

The alarm was raised at 4.15pm and two inshore rescue boats from Hemsby and Sea Palling, together with the Winterton Coastguard rescue team, went in search of her.

A spokesman for Yarmouth Coastguard Station said the nature of the tide at the time meant there was a very strong current and if the child had been in the water, she could have been carried up to four miles out to sea.

While the search was under way, the station received a call to say a lost child had been found in a Winterton cafe. She was collected by the coastguard and reunited with her parents.

On their way back to base, at about 4.50pm, the Hemsby lifeboat crew came across a jet-skier attempting to tow two others which had broken down about half a mile off Winterton Ness. The Hemsby crew alerted their Sea Palling colleagues and the two independent lifeboats each took a jet-skier aboard and towed their jet-skis back to Sea Palling, where the man and woman riding them had started their journeys.