Vandals who have blighted part of a town with graffiti have been criticised by a councillor.

The ugly art work has sprung up across Queenborough over the last few weeks and consists mainly of tags.

Queenborough and Halfway councillor, Mick Constable, said there had been an increase of the vandalism recently on windows round the town, on empty buildings, in alleyways, in the play park in Whiteway Road and even on walls of people’s homes.

He was keen to get the graffiti removed as soon as possible as he felt if it was left there for too long, other vandals would get the same idea and the problem would spread.

Cllr Constable spoke to a PCSO about the issue and most of the damage was removed by Swale council’s graffiti busters last Wednesday.

However, because some of the graffiti has been done on private land, the council has to wait for access before the rest of it can be removed.

Cllr Constable said: “Graffiti in Queenborough has never been a problem before but for some reason we have had a bit of an influx.

“Hopefully it will die down, but unless we stop it at the first sign it will just spread all over the town.

“It was all name tags everywhere and it just looks so ugly.

“We have got a lovely town and it’s reasonably clean – we don’t want this to spread everywhere because it spoils the environment.

“People who do it should have other things to do.

“We have got a lovely play park that ended up with graffiti all over it – we provide all this stuff for them and they are abusing it.

“Play nicely and don’t spoil the town and everybody will be happy.”

Insp Noel Stanley, from the Island Neighbourhood Team, said: “The spate of graffiti stopped once officers started making local inquiries in the community.

“Graffiti is an eyesore and during the summer months, with all the extra people we expect to visit Sheppey, we want to ensure that the Island looks as welcoming as possible.”

• If you know of anyone involved, contact police on 101