Yet some believe an upturn is on the horizon – and a business leader believes there is a “huge opportunity” for homebuyers who get in now while homes are cheap.

Criticisms of Yarmouth start before tourists looking to enjoy a day of sunshine by the sea even reach its sandy beaches.

The main route in is the nightmare A47 Acle Straight – a long single-carriageway road that often gets horrendously clogged with traffic, especially in the peak summer season.

Asa Morrison, chief executive of Visit Great Yarmouth, said: “Historically, it used to be quite hard to get into Yarmouth in the summer months, and even worse, it would take them a long time to get out.”

The £121million Herring Bridge, which opened in February 2024, has helped to ease the infuriating levels of congestion.

But Martin Bayfield, 43, visiting Yarmouth with his mother Bonnie, 70, from Lowestoft, said: “The bridge is fantastic but 20 years too late. A lot of industry could’ve been saved if it had been done 20 years ago.”

The decline over the recent decades is keenly felt by many, with Yarmouth facing multiple economic tidal waves.

Publican Ian Handley, landlord of The Coachmakers Arms, on the corner of Market Place, said: “The market used to come down to this corner. It used to be packed with stalls.

“People used to go up here at 1-2am, waiting for an empty pitch. It was a proper market town.

“It’s just like every market town, died a death.”

Coachmakers landlady Susan Colville added: “There’s not a lot of trade here any more. We’ve lost all our shops.”

Many blame that on the rise of out-of-town retail areas, predominantly the Gapton Hall Shopping Centre on the outskirts of Yarmouth.

Rene Iliff, 70, from Great Yarmouth, says: “This town has gone downhill, certainly in the last 10 years.

“One of the main issues is that all of the main shops are out of the town centre. It has killed the town centre.”

Paul Hodgson, owner of Tombstone Brewery and Saloon Bar, said the high street “needs a major investment”. He added: “It needs to bring businesses back into town.

“The town centre is dead. You can walk up to the town centre at night, there won’t be anyone about apart from groups of young men.

“They’ve moved everything out of town. So people just follow the big shops and places out of town.

“They’ve got to reinvigorate the high streets. I don’t think they’ll do that unless they get big businesses coming back to the high streets, so people will go there to visit those stores.”

Yarmouth resident Patricia Beutler said: “Although they’ve improved it quite a bit, when we go to other seaside towns, which have also been rundown in the past, we notice that they’ve come on leaps and bounds.

“I say to them every time, Yarmouth could learn a lesson or two.”

Her husband Konrad Beutler, vice-chairman of East Norfolk Campaign for Real Ale, believes the town is “crying out for a Primark”.

He added: “Yarmouth hasn’t got the footfall for retail. The retail is not here any more.”

But while Yarmouth needs investment, he believes it “deserves more” and that residents should talk up the town.

“I think anywhere that’s got deprivation does need lifting up,” he argued. “Whether this current Government will find the funds to do it is another matter.

“There is an element of deprivation, but that’s no different to where I was brought up in Surbiton or even affluent parts of London.

“There are elements of deprivation there as well. It’s possibly a bit more visible here, because it’s a small area.”

Of plans to improve Yarmouth, he said: “The community, the people themselves, have to share in it. They have to buy into that.”

It is hoped the £16.3million revamp of Great Yarmouth’s historic Winter Gardens – the UK’s last surviving Victorian seaside glasshouse, which has been closed for 18 years – will reinvigorate part of the town near the famous Pleasure Beach.

Crucially, it will give people somewhere to go when it rains, making Yarmouth a visitor attraction even when the heavens open.

“It’s the regeneration of what will be a beautiful building, restored back to its former glory on the seafront,” said Mr Morrison. “It’s a pretty Victorian building in its own right.

“It gives us a significant additional wet weather coverage, which is always good for the seafront. On the East Coast, when it’s cold, wet and windy, it’s really cold, wet and windy.”

But the biggest boost for Yarmouth’s struggling economy might come not from new shops or a rejuvenated town centre, but miles away from the Norfolk coastline, deep into the North Sea.

The East Coast is becoming a major hub for offshore renewable energy, with swathes of wind turbines visible in the water from the beach.

That’s creating thousands of high-skilled, highly technical, well-paid jobs – and Jack Weaver, chief operating officer for Norfolk Chambers of Commerce, believes it makes Yarmouth an ideal place to buy a home.

“The amount of investment in offshore renewables and the energy transition in the North Sea coastline, whether it’s the Humber down to Essex, is colossal,” he explained.

“And I think what’s really exciting about communities like Great Yarmouth is how that starts to kind of wash out into the community – and we haven’t quite seen it yet.

“If I had the money to invest in property, I’d probably be buying stuff on the coast in those communities right now, somewhere like Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft or Gorleston.

“I would be buying property in those places, because I think that’s a huge opportunity. The challenge is, the starting point is more deprived than everywhere else.”

It would certainly require a major shift in Yarmouth’s economic make-up. Much of its trade is seasonal, with staff working round the clock to serve tourists in summer but being unemployed in winter.

Alex Capon, who has lived in Great Yarmouth his entire life, believes that living by the coast and among nature has huge advantages over city life.

“It’s just quite a nice pace of life, not too hectic,” he said.

But he thinks Yarmouth “needs investment in infrastructure”, adding: “That’s been the main problem for years. It’s hard because the economy is not great here.”

Yet the town’s survival despite economic woes shows that Yarmouth perhaps has the most important thing of all – a spirit and dogged determination few can match.

Ricky Jeffs, 47, a property landlord who lives in Yarmouth,  says: “In the afternoons, it’s a bit like Benidorm. It’s nice.

“There are a lot of retired people here, and many of them enjoy a drink in the afternoon. They also play bingo and sing karaoke.

“The afternoons are lovely. It is retired people generally or people who are roofers who’ve worked since 6am and enjoy coming out.”

Mr Morrison sells Yarmouth as a “wonderful mix” of attractions and accommodation.

“Yarmouth doesn’t pretend to be anything, but it is a seaside resort, with lots and lots to do, particularly in the summer months,” he said.

He said there was “significant loyalty” from visitors, with many generations of the same family returning to Yarmouth’s seafront year after year.

If the green energy revolution really does take off, it could become more than a holiday destination for thousands of people – reviving its fortunes once more.