PHUKET: The Mayor of Patong, Chalermlak Kebsub, has sent letters to all beachfront businesses on the Patong foreshore asking for the proprietors to produce documents proving their businesses are legal or to have their businesses demolished.

Some demolition work has already been done. Today Mayor Chalermlak and Prab Keesin, son of the former mayor, meet on the beachfront at Patong over extensions to a resort onto the sand that appear to be illegal.

Khun Prab says he can produce a property title and that the built-up area of the sand and a restaurant placed on the sand at the Patong Bay Garden Resort are restoration work because of previous erosion.

Other businesses along Patong's foreshore are expected to have more difficulty producing documents. It has been previously claimed some documents disappeared during the 2004 tsunami.

Last night Patong council authorities pulled down part of the popular expat restaurant Sole Mio that had been extended without a permit and a neighboring restaurant will have a similar extension pulled down in five days.

It was revealed that at least one beach umbrella lounge vendor is paid by a Patong restaurant to use space on the beach at night for restaurant tables and chairs.

Some of the small restaurants that occupy a Patong council building on the shorefront near Loma Park pay 20,000 baht a month in rent and also use the area beyond the building illegally for tables and chairs.

In at least one case, a beach vendor is paid 10,000 baht a month for use of an area on the sand that he says he has the right to control - all day and also apparently all night.

Commercial use of Phuket's prime west coast beaches has turned the issue of who can do what on the sands into a circus, with beaches that should be maintained and properly preserved for everyone being rapidly degraded to profit a few.

''We don't mind being told what to do as long as everybody else also obeys the rules,'' one of the Patong restaurant renters said last night.

Khun Prab said that in his opinion, Patong beach could be cleared completely of umbrellas and loungers but the vendors would need to be given several years to get used to the idea.

On Wednesday, the shorefront at Surin beach also comes up for discussion when Cherng Talay Mayor Ma-Ann Samran - who also oversees Bang Tao and Layan beaches - meets Phuket Vice Governor Jamleran Tipayapongtada.

The pair will talk at Cherng Talay council offices at 8.30am then move to Bang Tao beach.

At 1.30pm, the mayor and the vice governor join other administrators in a larger meeting with Phuket Governor Maitree Intrusud at Phuket Provincial Hall about so-called ''attacks'' on public land on Phuket.