No, they’re not launching a side hustle as painters and decorators – these town councillors have been busy obliterating graffiti that had appeared on the wall of Teignmouth Post Office.

Councillors David Cox and Mike Jackman took a hands-on approach to tackling the tags, covering them up with two coats of magnolia paint.

Next, they painted over tags sprayed on walls in Clampet Lane and the underpass at Teignmouth Station.

Cllr Cox said: “Graffiti brings the town’s image down.

“People feel unsafe in areas where there’s a lot of graffiti, and it can increase crime.

“The young people who do it, often they think it’s just funny, but older people can find it quite frightening.

“We don’t want to discourage artistic street art, we’re quite happy with that, but this sort of tagging is not nice.

“We’re showing civic pride, that we care about our town.”

A group of Teignmouth town councillors, including Cllrs Cox and Jackman, are jointly offering a £200 reward to anyone who identifies a graffiti vandal.

Informants won’t have their name and address publicised, but they must be willing to talk to local police.

Rather than criminalising the culprits, the police will make them clean up the graffiti and will tell their parents what they’ve been doing.

The other town council members who contribute to the £200 reward fund are Cllrs Vanda Rudge, Dan Comer and Penny Lloyd.

Cllr Lloyd said: “The graffiti really does make the town look ever so tatty, and unfortunately it seems to be the same offenders every time, the same tags which are everywhere.

“We’re just fed up with it really, it makes some lovely buildings look so scruffy and neglected.

“We have a particular problem in the underpass - people have been painting over really nice art by local artists and tagging on those as well.”