I've collected fish and inverts from the beach many times, particularly while doing my marine biology degree (in Scotland rather than England though). I've also carried kilos of rocks back from the beach as an amateur fossil collector and when doing my palaeontology PhD/post-doc.
As I understand it, the law says can be summarised thus:
You cannot remove rocks from the beach placed there as sea defences, harbour walls, etc. Removing small amounts of rocks from natural exposures is absolutely fine unless the site is part of a conservation area (e.g., an SSSI, English Nature reserve, etc.) or privately owned land. Geology students do this all the time.
You cannot collect species that are protected by law such as protected species (like giant gobies, Gobius cobitis) or if they are commercially important animals that are too small to be exploited (so you cannot take an inch-long lobster or edible crab, for example).
Everything else is basically fair game. Rock pool animals like sand gobies, prawns, anemones, shore crabs, etc., are all fine. There's an art to picking species that will do well at room temperature, but bedlets, short crabs, and a blenny called the shanny are three that qualify. There is a great web site
here for anyone into British marine fish. I've kept various British marines, and trust me, a properly set up native marine aquarium is easy to look after and just as pretty as a coral reef tank.
Cheers,
Neale
That is true, i didn't think of that. Since it is illegal to take rocks of a beach that must be illegal to but who would know
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