A woman who was ditched by the Labour Party is back on her old patch helping people resolve their differences.

Mo Marsh was a Brighton and Hove city councillor for eight years before party leaders decided not to reselect her to stand in last May's local elections.

She has now returned to East Brighton, the area she used to represent, working as project manager for the newly formed East Brighton Mediation Service.

The project is part of Brighton and Hove Independent Mediation Service, an organisation which attempts to resolve conflict between warring neighbours as well as tenants and landlords.

Mo's brief is to develop a service focusing solely on East Brighton, which includes Whitehawk, Moulsecoomb and the Bates Estate. Funding is coming from eb4u, the Government project aiming to regenerate the area.

She said: "It's absolutely lovely to be back and seems like a seamless transition. I'm so ingrained in the area I couldn't have asked for anything better.

"When this opportunity came up I was thrilled to be able to go for the job because I could bring in the skills I had learned from my previous job. I had got to know the people so well during the past eight years.

"Interestingly enough, in terms of the case work that comes in, as a councillor you get a lot of people bemoaning their neighbours and you spend a lot of time trying to bring agencies together to resolve the problems."

Mo, who came to Brighton in 1965 to study at the University of Sussex, is in charge of a team of volunteer mediators whose role it is to stop problems escalating.

She said: "It's a contribution to harmonious living. If you provide mediation, you can prevent an escalation of a conflict which could help stop it reaching the point where anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) are issued or even eviction.

"Mediation is like a journey and you have to get people on that journey before their positions become too entrenched. Often people who come to us have been good mates and wouldn't mind being good mates again."

The East Brighton service is working closely with the East Brighton Community Safety Team, which includes police, housing officials and wardens who will alert the service to problems.

Residents can also approach mediators directly.

Mo, who trained as a mediator but will not be working as one herself, has ten cases on her books.

During the mediation process pairs of volunteers go to one neighbour and then another to listen to both sides.

They then get the disputing sides to come together on neutral ground to discuss their problems.

A mutually agreed contract is drawn up setting out how both sides agree to behave in the future.

If the dispute is still unresolved, other agencies will become involved and anti-social behaviour orders and evictions can be enforced.

Mo has been speaking to community groups in East Brighton raising the profile of the new service.

She said: "I think we have to be very clear we are not always going to win all the time. But if we don't win, perhaps it has enabled us to clarify where people need to go next to resolve their problems."

Anyone who wants to contact the service should call 01273 700812.