Councillor Paula Widdowson, City of York Council’s Executive Member for Environment and Climate Change, has hailed the signing of a unique graffiti cleaning deal with the Government’s Environment Agency.
The new deal means that the City of York Council graffiti team will clean a range of Environment Agency assets including walls, sluices, floodgates and cabinets along with a monthly inspection regime to ensure they stay clear of graffiti.
Cllr Widdowson said, “As a council, York’s approach to the scourge of graffiti is a unique and modernising one which increasingly means we can deal not with only incidents on our own assets and property - which is the usual situation - but also where it defaces our partners’ property too.”
Environment Agency lead Richard Spence said, “We recognise that from time to time our Flood Protection assets in York, many of which are newly installed, are targeted by graffiti. Our own engineers will continue to routinely maintain and operate these assets but this partnership agreement with the City of York Council will provide a framework for the removal of graffiti in a timely manner meaning that they will continue to look their best."
The agreement between the two public sector organisations follows a period in which the City of York Council has carried out similar work for Virgin Media across York. That contract - renewed in October 2022 - came about because in spite of high numbers of requests, the graffiti team could not clean Virgin Media's cabinets as they are not council-owned.
The Virgin Media agreement initially ran for an initial six months starting in October 2021, was renewed in April 2022 and has been further renewed from October 2022.
At its launch, Paul Edwards, Director of Field Engineering & Operations at Virgin Media O2, said: “Through this innovative trial with City of York Council, we hope to make it faster and easier to remove graffiti from our on-street cabinets. Damage to our cabinets and equipment can cause customers to lose the vital services they rely on, so we’re committed to tackling this problem and keeping our customers connected.”
Councillor Widdowson added, “The excellent work of the team in the partnership with Virgin Media has paved the way for this new deal with the Environment Agency and potentially opens up further deals with similar providers, giving us both greater scope to tackle this terrible anti-social behaviour and get the taxpayer better value for money through an additional income to the graffiti cleaning team.”
Residents or businesses can report graffiti at:
https://www.york.gov.uk/ReportGraffiti
The Council graffiti team can clear graffiti from properties and street furniture, including:
- council houses and other council buildings
- fences, walls or boundaries
- ancient monuments and some memorials
- city walls and bar walls
- some bridges
- play equipment in council play areas
- street furniture, such as seats
- dog bins and litter bins
- bus stops
- sign posts
- bollards
- private houses and business premises
The team will aim to remove offensive graffiti within 24 hours and non-offensive graffiti within 4 working days.
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