THRILL-seekers who get their kicks jumping off a cliff have been slammed for causing unsuspecting ramblers to call emergency services.

Extreme sports enthusiasts plummet from the clifftop at Beachy Head in East Sussex, deploying their parachute at the very last minute in a hobby known as base jumping.

Unsuspecting walkers have called emergency services, thinking the jumpers have fallen to their deaths at the notorious suicide spot, wasting time and valuable resources, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) said.

Two coastguard teams were deployed to the cliff on Tuesday after concerned citizens contacted them when they saw eight people diving from the East Sussex beauty spot.

At the scene, rescuers told the base jumpers to notify the coastguard if they planned to leap over the edge to ensure emergency services were not deployed.

Mark Sawyer, 57, the coxswain of the Eastbourne lifeboat told the Telegraph newspaper: ‘An issue we get is the distress it causes people who see them doing what they think is jumping off Beachy Head.’

He added that the coastguard team will get pulled away from responding to an actual emergency to deal with the base jumpers.

The extreme-sports enthusiasts need to try to ensure emergency services aren’t called out as it ‘can be avoided’, he said.

‘We don’t want to be killjoys and we don’t want people to stop doing what they do, just use the common sense factor of telling the coastguard.’

Mr Sawyer said that in August 2018, one base jumper crashed off the cliff face after his parachute only partially opened.

The jumper broke his leg and hip in the fall.