Police property including a cell block and a van had to have a "special deep clean" because a woman reportedly spat and ejected bodily fluids after being arrested in Penge.

Police say Marie Archer, 51, started attacking a parked van while armed with a garden rake and an empty bottle of tequila.

"What the van did to upset her we don’t know," Bromley police wrote on Facebook.

Police arrived to St John's Road just after midnight on August 20 to find the van with a smashed rear window and several dents.

Archer was arrested at the scene and was also taken in for allegedly throwing a bottle of booze through the window of a home five days earlier.

A police statement added: "Archer was placed in the back of a police van then taken onto police custody. When she was arrested, she allegedly started spitting on, and ejected bodily fluids so much at everything, that part of the cell block and the police van had to have a special deep clean for hygiene reasons. Yuck.

"We wouldn’t want some other person arrested on suspicion of something, to have to sit in a pile of sputum or other substance, no one deserves that.

"It’s not nice and really, really, dirty."

She was charged with three counts of criminal damage and police are waiting to hear back from the Crown Prosecution Service with an update.