People fined for tagging and graffiti are starting to clean it off themselves as part of their punishment, councillors have been told.
The revelation came as members of Brighton and Hove City Council agreed to increase fines for graffiti to a maximum of £500 from the start of next month.
Members of the council’s City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee also agreed to increase fines for fly-tipping, littering and fly-posting as part of wider environmental enforcement measures.
Conservative councillor Carol Theobald said that she was happy with the increases but asked whether people would stop tagging.
She said: “I do feel that a fine is not enough. I’d like to see these people actually go and take their graffiti off the wall or wherever they put it and spend the time doing that so they know the damage they’ve done.
“It seems to me that most of them just have a slap on the wrist to say ‘oh naughty’ – and that’s it.”
Senior council official Rachel Chasseaud said that she hoped that the maximum fines would deter people.
Mrs Chasseaud said: “Getting people to remove the graffiti is something that, working with the police, we have just started doing.
“We had one person who was caught – and that was well publicised. He has just finished removing graffiti. It’s something called immediate justice.”
Green councillor Kerry Pickett asked whether enough people were in place to enforce the increased penalties.
She said: “Has the council employed extra people to do this? If there aren’t enough people to enforce these higher penalties, it’s not going to work.”
Mrs Chasseaud said that there are currently eight environmental enforcement officers, a manager and an operations manager, with the budget raised from fines.
She added that if it proved necessary – and there was the revenue – then the team could expand.
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, who chairs the committee, said that increasing fines was only as good as the enforcement.
He told the committee that, in the past six months, the council had caught three times as many graffiti perpetrators as it did during the same period last year.
In September and October, the number of fines for fly-tipping almost doubled compared with a year earlier.
Councillor Rowkins said: “Clearly, our efforts to ramp up the enforcement is paying dividends – and the increase in fines will hopefully lead to greater opportunities to enforce in future.”
At the committee meeting at Hove Town Hall on Tuesday (15 November), councillors agreed to increase fines for commercial fly-tipping from £400 to £1,000 and for fly-tipping household waste to £600.
Littering fines will increase from £150 to £300 and fly-posting fines will increase to £500.
But how few of these vandals are ever caught ?!? Makes me so angry that as soon as it is removed it is back again like the end of Baker Street & the shops round the corner on London Road.
Police are not interested and CCTV alone cant identify them
I cannot believe this (blatantly obvious) punishment has only just been decided upon!! It’s SO much more appropriate than fining these anti-social individuals. Why on earth should anyone else clean off their vandalism?!!! It’s not rocket science!!
At least it’s a start of things to come.
Fines are useless for some of these people since they use their tags to promote their social media sites and make money from them, that idiot Johnny Crew is a prime example. Make them clean up every single one of their tags & confiscate all their earnings from Youtube etc. as the proceeds of crime.
Seems a good idea in principal but I won’t be holding my breath waiting to see the tags removed from practically every vertical surface in central Brighton and the Lewes and London Road corridors.
First you have to catch the taggers – I can’t say that I’ve ever seen any of these environmental enforcement officers anywhere except in central Brighton harassing victims of crime small shop keepers. As for the police they just totally ignore all forms of anti-social behaviour…
Thats the Police duty and they are not interested
the comment on small shops being fined , struck home…a few years ago I was fined £600 for fly tipping 20 grams of till receipts into a re-cycling bin , when group 4 were doing the patrolling ….I appealed to all the local councilors for help , and not one of them did
I hope someone gets jonny crew
It’s a job for the police no one else
It’s criminal damage
Like Genocide in Palestine
Lies lies lies money monry oil
Iv got Palestinian roots and I’m. Part Jewish our world leaders all have blood on their hands
Something has to be done.
Brighton looks more and more like Croydon every day. Absolute $h1thole.