Smashed Lambrini bottles vie for floorspace with chips, spit puddles and general household detritus. The smell of urine hangs in the air.

And this is just the car park.

Welcome to Teville Gate in Worthing - apparently one of the shabbiest places in the country.

The once-bustling shopping precinct, yards from the busy mainline station, today stands like a miniature ghost town.

A piece of graffiti warns "We R Gonna Rob You" but there's virtually nothing left to steal.

Almost all the dozen or so shops are boarded up and the municipal toilets are padlocked.

A Comet electrical store - once the largest in the area but now the smallest - gleams forlornly on the corner.

The nearby pharmacist and janitorial supplies shop retain their regular customers. But that's it. The newsagent, keyboard shop, bedding centre, bike shop and all the others are closed.

This week Teville Gate was shortlisted as the Shabbiest Street in Britain by listeners of Radio Five Live. Reporter Gill Farrington, a former journalist with The Argus, broadcast live from the parade yesterday - and described it as "grim".

Gill had visited other shabby streets throughout the week, including Penge in south London and Rushden in Northamptonshire but said Teville Gate was the worst.

She said: "It is just one of the saddest places I have ever been to. It filled me with dread."

The other streets on the shortlist of three were Niddrie Mains Road, Edinburgh, and South Normanton High Street in Derbyshire. Listeners were voting online yesterday and the result was expected to be revealed today.

Teville Gate's nomination came as no surprise to locals.

Lab technician Ben Wright, 22, from Broadwater, Worthing, said: "I feel unsafe here at night, definitely. I would walk the long way round instead. We use it as a cut-through to the station but you get boy racers at night."

Barry Clark, a 56-year-old maintenance engineer from east Worthing, said: "For the gateway into Worthing, it's basically disgusting. People use it as a dump."

Karen Hall, 42, was passing through with her ten-year-old son Matthew.

She said: "I have lived just over the road for nine years and it has really gone downhill. There used to be a whole parade of shops and it was really nice.

"But now you get druggies, drunks and squatters and there are kids hanging around skiving school.

"I definitely wouldn't come out at night and won't allow my son to go through to the Co-op on his own."

Schemes to redevelop the area have been mooted over the past five years, including a cinema complex. All have fallen through.

A Worthing Borough Council spokeswoman said: "As leaseholder of part of the site it has been one of the council's prime objectives to see the site redeveloped.

"The council has now signed an agreement with a potential developer to help bring that about but is unable to give full details at this stage."

The shopkeepers remain hopeful of a turnaround in the precinct's fortunes.

Staff in Comet declined to comment. Keith Walker, owner of Teville Gate Pharmacy, said: "It started going downhill eight years ago but we are still fairly busy and hope there will be a redevelopment next year."