More than £9,000 has been earmarked for a scheme to rid Eastbourne's streets of dumped cars.

The number of abandoned vehicles in the resort streets has more than doubled in the past two years.

Eastbourne Borough Council has now decided to spend the extra £9,500 to rid its streets of nuisance vehicles.

Jon Harris, environment spokesman for council, said: "I'll be pushing for a blitz across the town to clear the backlog of abandoned cars and then rewriting the procedures to make the process much more efficient, which will include publishing a dumped car hotline number.

"We'll also be working more closely with the police and the DVLA so that we can recover our costs where appropriate."

The authority is setting up a joint operation with the police, DVLA and East Sussex County Council.

The team will clear vehicles which are illegally parked, untaxed and abandoned a lot more quickly.

Once cars are abandoned they will be removed, held for collection by an owner and only released for a fee or, where appropriate, crushed.

A similar hit squad operating on two Brighton housing estates cleared more than 150 vehicles in two days.