A useful community feature or just an eyesore?

Cllr Ensor had received complaints about the graffiti from local residents in his ward.

He said: "This is the main link between the north of Bexhill and the centre, so lots of people use this underpass - children use it on the way to school and mums with buggies on the way to the shops."

Apart from the graffiti which he thinks gives a "poor impression" of the wellbeing of the town, Cllr Ensor says the underpass floods whenever there is heavy rain.

He has discussed the matter with the Highways Agency and Inter-Route, the contractor responsible for maintenance, and reached an agreement they will provide an electric pump to get rid of excess water when it rains.

Cllr Ensor said: "The aim is to have this as a pleasant way of getting through from the top of the town to the centre."

He described the cleaning as "a significant step forward" and felt this was the result of different agencies working together, including Rother District Council which paid for paint and materials, the Highways Agency, Safer Rother Partnership, and the probation service.

He said: "It is all coming together today.

"Residents in Bexhill have been asking for this improvement and at last it has happened."

The work was carried out by a group of offenders doing community service as part of their sentence.

Nine of them set about the task of making the underpass more attractive and user-friendly for the many pedestrians moving from one side of King Offa Way to the other.

The clean-up operation was supervised by Peter Bond, project manager for unpaid work for the probation service, who said it was "definitely positive"

"To me it is about putting something back into the community. On the whole I have found offenders, when you bring them to a place like this, develop empathy with the people who are going to use it.

"There is a lot of team support."

One of his team was a 40-year-old woman from Hastings who had been convicted of drink-driving. She was also involved in a recent project at a home for adults with learning disabilities in St Leonards, and said: "It is something that has got to be done, so you might as well get on with it and not sit around moaning about it, like some people do."