Tynemouth and Cullercoats RNLI inshore lifeboats were launched at 1.30pm to search for a man who had called police making the threats to jump.

The two vessels, with seven volunteer crew members, were joined in the search by a land-based coastguard team, North Tyneside Beach Lifeguards, with Northumbria Police also searching on land and with the helicopter.

The man had made a subsequent call revealing that he could see the police helicopter searching for him and again threatening to harm himself.

The RNLI lifeboats made an intensive search of five miles of coastline between Tynemouth Pier and St Mary's Island, Whitley Bay, finding nothing.

After approximately an hour the search was called off after the missing man was found by police in a house in Cullercoats.

An RNLI spokesman said: "We sympathise with people who are genuinely in distress and will do anything we can to help them.

"When people threaten to harm themselves we have to take their threats
seriously, which in this case has resulted in an unnecessary large scale search operation which could have diverted resources from a real emergency."