With the precision of a police fingertip search, 40 "pickers" in yellow jackets comb Brighton beach, sifting through pebbles to remove shards of glass.

The clean-up team worked on hands and knees to remove tonnes of debris left by revellers at the Fatboy Slim concert on Saturday night.

Fatboy, real name Norman Cook, has funded part of the clean-up operation himself.

Brighton and Hove City Council's own beach-cleaning crew has worked round the clock to clear hundreds of tonnes of rubbish but yesterday took industrial action with other colleagues.

Instead, a 40-strong team from Nu-Kleen combed the pebbles.

Mark Tyler, managing director of the firm, said it was the first time they had tackled the beach.

He said: "It is difficult to see the glass and particularly difficult to remove because of the layers upon layers of pebbles.

"You can't use machinery so we have picked out sackloads of glass, bottle tops, nails and other sharp objects.

"We hope to get 95 per cent of it out but no one can ever get all of it out. I'd advise no one should go on to the beach without shoes."

The council's own beach crews have worked non-stop since the party to shift mountains of rubbish.

One member of the crew estimated 300 tonnes of debris had been removed so far.

The member, who asked not to be named, said 78 tonnes of glass was removed from the beach and surrounding areas in the first few hours after the concert.

"The beach crew has worked until they virtually dropped, putting in 20 or 24-hour shifts. But there was one of us for about every 6,000 partygoers. It's really an impossible task."

The worker warned the glass and rubbish would be a recurring nightmare.

He said: "We have a circular tide and as soon as there is a choppy sea all the rubbish that's already gone out to sea will come back in for months afterwards.

"The beach crew love this beach and we try to make sure it is safe and clean but it is an ongoing battle.

"After four days we are only just starting to get it back to some sort of normality."

Yesterday afternoon, as the sun continued to shine, deckchairs reappeared between the piers and sunbathers arrived on the beach.

A 40-strong choir from Sion Manning Girls School, in London, were on a day trip to Brighton.

Andrew Parkin, director of music, criticised the council for failing to warn visitors about the potential glass danger.

He said: "We heard about the Fatboy concert on the news so we warned the girls to keep their shoes on and watch out for glass.

"But if we hadn't known about it there was nothing here to tell us. They should have put up signs."

The council said it was confident the beach would be as safe as it could be by the end of Tuesday.

But yesterday, despite the search, glass was still clearly visible between the pebbles.

The team planned to have finished its search last night.

Dr Patrick Friend, research fellow in sediment dynamics at the School of Ocean and Earth Science, Southampton University, said it could take several years of winter storms to fully degrade the glass.

He said: "Broken glass on a beach will degrade and become relatively safe according to the amount of wave energy it receives."

"Generally, the lower the glass is on the beach, the quicker it will degrade. In the sea, as long as the glass is in the breaker zone, or higher, degradation will proceed fairly rapidly."