Graffiti

What is graffiti?

Graffiti refers to the drawings, patterns, scribbles, messages and tags that are painted, written or carved on public walls, spaces or other surfaces - such as pavements, walkways or fences.

It is most commonly seen as tags or signatures.

The content may be offensive or have a detrimental visual impact to the surrounding environment.

Graffiti is regarded as criminal damage and as such a prosecution may be brought under Section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971.

Both fly-posting and graffiti are prosecutable under law with the maximum penalty being unlimited and decided by the courts.

What do we do?

We aim to remove offensive graffiti from public buildings we are responsible for within 24hrs of it being reported, or on the next working day. Due to Covid-19, any non-offensive graffiti may take up to 2 weeks to remove.

Our operatives are trained to use a chemical graffiti removal system to clean any surface.

But we DO NOT remove graffiti from private buildings - that is the responsibility of the owner. 

In general this is not a service we are able to offer the public or private sector as we have limited resources and equipment available.  In some circumstances we have assisted with removal of graffiti from Leicestershire County Council and some parish council buldings. The chemicals we use are very costly, so it is necessary to recharge these organisations.

For more information on the complaints procedure for graffiti please see Grafitti (PDF Document, 0.31 Mb).

Report graffiti

Call us on 01530 454545 or email customer.services@nwleicestershire.gov.uk