IT IS a thankless task local authorities have balancing public safety with the our cherished rights to freedom.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, authorities must walk the line between keeping us safe and not becoming a nannying interference in our lives.

This is the dilemma facing East Sussex County Council at Seven Sisters, after another picture emerged of a pair of daredevils dangling their feet precariously off the cliff’s edge.

Tens of thousands of people visit Seven Sisters each year, mostly sensible people enjoying the stunning views of the English Channel from the dramatic chalk cliffs, uninterrupted by fences or barriers.

This is partly for practical reasons – it would be a logistical nightmare cheating a safe, secure fence that scales the rolling perimeter of the Seven Sisters.

But there are factors at play.

There is a separate argument to be had about suicide and ways of making it harder for people to take their own lives.

But when daredevils are determined to take risks and ponder their own mortality down the sheer drop of the cliffs, there is very little anyone can do to physically stop them.

Local authorities would be overstepping the mark if they allowed the actions of a reckless few spoil the experience for the majority.

We can incessantly warn people of the dangers, but it is debatable whether these people are too stupid to realise the risks.

Surely it is the very risk which is so attractive.

Some parents allow their young children to walk close to the cliff’s edge to introduce them to danger at young age.

Putting up fences fails to expose that danger and could arguably put the mollycoddled at greater risk if they think the authorities should protect them any risk great or small.

The council made the right decision.

We must warn individuals of the dangers – but we cannot wrap them in cotton wool or shield them from the world.