Worthing is to lose many of its public telephone boxes after BT declared them unprofitable.

The communications giant has begun getting rid of about 21 kiosks in Worthing, which the company said were surplus.

Among those already axed were two in Montague Place and one outside the town's law courts.

However, BT insisted it would not leave any area without sufficient telephone cover.

Notices in the condemned kiosks tell customers: "BT is proposing to remove this public phone kiosk in the near future. Adequate payphone facilities will still exist nearby."

BT is carrying out a review of 30,000 unprofitable payphones across Britain.

It plans to remove 12,000 classified as "underused" during the next 12 months.

BT spokesman Les King said: "We intend to remove some phone boxes from the Worthing area but these will only be where they are not being used or where there are several boxes in one place.

"The intention is to thin out the number of boxes while keeping a good geographical cover."

There are 248 payphones with the 01903 code, of which 151 were in Worthing.

Just before Christmas, BT announced that, due to a drop in customer demand, it would review street phone boxes to prepare for a multimedia future.

The number of calls made from call boxes has dipped by a third during the last two years, largely because of the increase in mobile phones.