FRIGHTENED staff are being forced to work behind bars to protect themselves from teenage thugs.

Medway Council decided to put up the 6ft fortress around the offices in Canterbury Street, Gillingham, to shield workers from gangs of yobs targeting the building.

Staff from MeRGE, the Medway tenants group, say they have to lock themselves inside the building and have had reflective windows fitted to stop youths looking inside after a long line of attacks.

Before the railings were put up thugs kicked down the door and sent a Staffordshire bull terrier in to terrorise staff who had stayed behind for an evening meeting.

Staff also discovered soiled underwear had been posted through the letter box.

And drunk teenagers have thrown themselves against the glass windows and covered the windows with graffiti. The catalogue of incidents was revealed at a public meeting into policing in Gillingham last week.

Biffy Roche works at the organisation which advises tenants on what they are entitled to, in conjunction with Medway Council.

She said: "These gangs are the bane of our lives. They call themselves the Smiley Gang or the Kent Killers and are well-known to the police.

"They have a three inch file on them and when we report an incident, they just add it to the file. The police say they cannot prosecute because they cannot be sure it is these teenagers causing the damage.

"It should not come to the stage where we and our office have to be protected by metal railings.

"The police are slow to arrive and say it is because what is happening is not life-threatening. On another occasion police arrived at our offices 20 hours after we called them.