Glyn Evans shows off his graffiti cleaning equipment

Southend Council has come up with a cheeky solution to beat the graffiti blight - get residents to clear it up themselves.

People have been urged to "adopt a wall" and lend a little elbow grease in an effort to rid the town of the all too common scrawlings of yobs.

The council has been handing out graffiti kits with all that is needed to clean away spray paint from walls, bus shelters and signs.

It seems people do not mind donating their time, as more than 150 of the kits, given out for free, have been snapped up in the past four months.

Network Rail has now jumped on the bandwagon and today announced it has joined forces with the council to hand out cleaning kits to residents to help clean up areas near railway lines.

Volunteer Glyn Evans, 55, of Kilworth Avenue, Southend, said he was quite pleased to do the council's dirty work, alongside other members of Kilworth Neighbourhood Watch group.

He said: "The council has had vans cleaning graffiti for about a year or so, but it can't keep up with it. The choice was to pitch in and give the council a hand.

"The fact is, if you live in an area you can't expect the council to do everything. We are meeting them halfway. They provide the cleaning materials and we provide the manpower."

Karon Grant, Southend Council's clean neighbourhoods enforcement officer, said the volunteer cleaners were a big help to the council's graffiti-busting vans, which worked daily to rid the town of scrawls.

She said: "With the smaller jobs being completed by residents, it frees up our vans to work on the bigger jobs."

Ian Roberston, executive councillor for a safer, cleaner Southend, said it was hoped residents' efforts would help the graffiti blight fade out.

He said: "Once people have made the effort of cleaning graffiti, we hope they would feel encouraged to pay extra attention to the location of their handiwork. We have found that graffiti which quickly disappears does not quickly reappear."

5:53pm Tuesday 17th October 2006