REVEALED: the cost of graffiti for city's taxpayers

Buildings and businesses in Brighton and Hove have been blighted by ugly tags and eyesore scrawls in that time, and it has come at a whopping cost eclipsing half a million pounds.

Figures from a Freedom of Information request by this newspaper shows Brighton and Hove City Council has forked out £636,482 since 2009/10 to this year on cleaning offensive graffiti. That works out at £193 per day, and more than £70,000 a year.

The total figure would have been enough to restore six of the 151 Madeira Terrace arches, which are estimated to cost £100,000 each by experts.

Deputy council leader Gill Mitchell, who is chairwoman of the environment, transport and sustainability committee, called for co-operation between authorities to tackle the problem.

She told The Argus: “In the 25 years I have been a councillor, I think the situation has got worse.

“This is not something the council can tackle on its own.

“We need to work in partnership with others, particularly the police, to be able to tackle this problem given the limited resources we have at our disposal.”

The tagging culture has become a huge issue in the city, affecting business owners and residents.

Many of the same scrawls have been seen on different landmarks around Brighton and one of the most notorious is a tag that looks like a clenched fist.

It started appearing last summer, and has been daubed high and wide across city centre buildings including the Boots and Co-op stores in London Road.

The person behind the crimes remains anonymous.

A tag which seems to say Pluto is also a regular sight, often sprayed on signs and properties in purple paint.

The fees racked up by the council having to remove graffiti such as this is split into two categories.Non-staff costs are the price of jet washers, vans, fuel and other materials.

The other category is staff costs – the wages of the people carrying out the work.

The biggest hit on the public purse came in 2009/2010, with £108,175 being spent on cleaning graffiti.

Of that figure, £28,337 was spent on non-staff costs and almost £80,000 on staff.

Staff costs fluctuated from 2009 to 2014, but have stayed at £41,710 over the past four years.

The council is working on a strategy to clamp down on the issue and it works with artists, charities and other organisations to stop graffiti in “hotspot” areas by painting murals and landscape pieces.

Cllr Mitchell said: “We are putting together a graffiti strategy for Brighton and Hove by consulting with partners.

“Our strategy includes using local intelligence gathered from companies in relation to people that are doing graffiti.

“However, the strategy is only as good as the funding we get.

“Budgets have been cut by the Government and it is harder for the statutory agencies to carry out this work.

“Resources within the council and police are severely limited, but we desperately need the support of the police.

“The police have the primary responsibility dealing with people doing graffiti and tagging. The people doing it are criminals.

“We also need the support of the business community. Graffiti devalues properties in the same area.”

The council says it will remove graffiti from public and private property within 24 hours of receiving the report if it is offensive.

If the vandalism is ageist, anti-faith, homophobic, personal, political, racist, sexist or contains swear words, the CityClean team will get rid of it.

Some buildings in Brighton and Hove have walls designated for graffiti artwork – however none of these is owned by the council.

The authority said: “The council is responsible for removing any graffiti on public property.

“This includes council offices and council owned street and park furniture such as lights, signs and benches.

“We also work in partnership with businesses and utility companies who have street furniture. This includes Virgin Media with their green exchange boxes.

“We work closely with the police to ensure people vandalising the city are stopped and prosecuted.

“Our graffiti and jet washing team use a variety of methods to clear graffiti from across the city.

“This includes the use of chemicals, high pressure water jets and cherry pickers. They work on a schedule, clearing graffiti from one area of the city at a time.

“Graffiti can range from someone’s initials written on a wall in pen to a whole painted mural covering the side of a building.

It is illegal to graffiti on any surface without the owner’s permission.”

This is the breakdown for the past eight years with the most recent figures available:

2009/10: non-staff £29,995, staff £73,351

2010/11: non-staff £28,337, staff £79,838

2011/12: non-staff £27,127, staff £80,440

2012/13: non-staff £20,460, staff £52,128

2013/14: non-staff £13,195, staff £12,221

2014/15: non-staff £11,160, staff £41,170

2015/16: non-staff £6,281, staff £41,170

2016/17: non-staff £27,681, staff £41,170

2017/18: non-staff £7,428, staff £41,170

If you need graffiti cleaned from a property, call Brighton and Hove City Council on 01273 292 929.

Sussex Police did not respond to The Argus’s request for a comment before we went to print.