Residents pay the price for rise in graffiti

Cleaning up thousands of incidents of graffiti in Canterbury is costing taxpayers almost £70,000 per year.

New figures received through a Freedom of Information request found that incidents of graffiti have been on the increase.

Between 2022 and 2023 there were 2,943 incidents of graffiti with 7,803 individual tags removed by Canterbury City Council. Then between 2023 and 2024 there were 3,628 incidents of graffiti with 7,470 individual tags removed.

There have been some recent high profile incidents such as when Canterbury City Council released a CCTV image in March of this year in order to identify a person who left graffiti in the Station Road West car park.

Station Road West multi story car park – Google maps

So far this year, 1,055 incidents of graffiti have been reported and 1,445 individual tags removed, only four months into the year.

In a statement given to the Canterbury Hub, Canterbury City Council has said: “While we would far rather not spend taxpayers’ cash cleaning off graffiti, this work remains a priority for us and we have dedicated officers out and about everyday making sure the district is as clean as possible.

“It should be remembered that graffiti is a societal problem across the country and we certainly do not believe Canterbury district has any more of an issue with it than anywhere else.”

The council has a £70,000 budget for graffiti removal each year. In 2023, £69,613 of the budget was utilised, compared with £62,317 the year before.

The increase in statistics may be from improvements to how the public can report incidents of graffiti using online forms.

According to Canterbury City Council, posters and stickers are now included in their graffiti statistics, with their officers using forms to log incidents of graffiti. This means official statistics may contribute to the rise in statistics.

There is also a reward scheme in place where residents may receive a £500 reward for providing information which helps identify a graffiti vandal.

Any incidents of graffiti can be reported online at Canterbury.gov.uk/graffiti.