Vandals wasted their own time when their ugly graffiti was wiped out in three days.

A community and cross-town effort led to their spray-paint scars being promptly scrubbed out.

The vandals had struck on the night of Saturday, July 7, spray-painting luminous graffiti along a half-mile stretch of Elms Vale Road in Maxton, Dover, and part of Elms Vale Recreation Ground.

They damaged two bus stops, several street signs and four BT junction boxes.

In addition they daubed paint across shutters of a newsagent's window and broke window panes on a listed red BT phone box.

They also spray painted two vans, though those were later driven away by the owners.

The ward district councillors, Peter Wallace, John Heron and Ann Napier, got to work after being alerted by residents.

They also enlisted the help of clean-up volunteers the Folkestone Town Sprucer group.

The two groups spent three hours last Tuesday scrubbing off the luminous green paint from the public roads and shop shutters.

Cllr Wallace commented: “I’m incredibly grateful to the Sprucers who volunteered to come over to Dover to help.

" We couldn’t have got this amount of mess cleaned up so quickly without them. We could really do with them in Dover more often to clean up graffiti around the town.

Cllr Napier reported the damage to police and said that CCTV was being considered to prevent this happening again.

This could be done by ward town councillor grants, and Cllrs Wallace and Heron are among the town authority's local members.

She said. "Our aim is to improve the whole Folkestone Road area and we will pursue prosecuting the people who did it.

"I feel more needs to be done to deter the perpetrators and I would welcome a stronger stand from the authorities on this matter.

"We need to investigate ways to steer young people away from taking up graffiti vandalism and for them to take pride in their community.”

The FTS group is a registered charity with 20 volunteers who do litter picks and cleanups, remove graffiti and cut back trees in their own town.

The four members who came were leader Peter Phillips with, Christopher Knight, Ian Moyse and John Hackett.

FTS members already know Cllr Wallace as he lived in Folkestone until 2012 and was until then the Folkestone and Hythe Labour Party secretary.

Group leader Peter Phillips said: “When Peter called me to ask for help, of course we said yes. It’s great to see Peter, John and Ann doing what councillors should.

"They’re restoring a bit of civic pride. It took a morning to clean the paint off but it had to be done.”

FTS was founded by the late David Taylor, a community leader in Folkestone in 2013.

He had been inspired after being on holiday in San Francisco and seeing similar work done there.

Mr Taylor, of the Bradstone Residents' Association, died of cancer last December, aged 77.