A FORMER EastEnders actress who shouted “black lives don’t matter” and “black c***” during a seafront brawl has been sentenced to community service.

Katie Jarvis who played Hayley Slater in the BBC soap from 2018 to 2019, pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment and common assault at Basildon Crown Court on Tuesday.

Judge Samantha Leigh handed her a two-year community order sentence, requiring 200 hours of unpaid work and 60 days of rehabilitation, on Wednesday.

Jarvis, of Rainham, started fight with a mother, who was out with a friend and her two daughters, outside a Southend seafront fish and chip shop at about 7.30pm on July 31, 2020.

The Fish Tank actress had taken one of the party’s chairs without asking.

When confronted, Jarvis called the woman a “black c***”, and “black lives don’t matter,” Cyrus Shroff, prosecuting, told the court, before a fight broke out.

In a witness statement read to the court, the attacked mother said: “It made me disgusted and angry, especially there were children around. I could not believe in 2020 these things were being said. It reminded me of being younger in the 80s when I was targeted for being black while living on an estate in London.”

Jarvis’ solicitor Patrick Harte said his client was apologetic for the racist language she had used but maintained she did not hold racist views.

The mother-of-two, who says she was drunk, left the scene of the fight before police arrived, and according to the prosecution, was witnessed shouting: “I’m a celebrity, I was on Eastenders and my life matters,” as she walked along Eastern Esplanade.

At the Top of Pier Hill, she told police officers she had been “jumped by four back b**ches,” but grew agitated and stormed off after a passing member of public referred to her by her EastEnders character name.

Later that evening, at about 9.15pm, Jarvis, who at this point was with her two children, was refused entry to the Hope Hotel.

She returned alone an hour later, shouting abuse at the guard and spitting in his direction.

Police were called to the scene, and she was arrested.