Graffiti bill to city is highest in the UK
Shocking figures show true cost to taxpayer
GLASGOW C i t y Council has been revealed as the U K ’ s b i g g e s t spender on graffiti removal, ac c o r d i n g t o f ig u r e s collected from structural repair specialists.
The local authority was one of 381 UK councils to be asked how much money it spent on removing graffiti scrawls in 2019 in a Freedom of Information request.
The figures revealed the body spent £ 649,000 on deploying graffiti removal specialists to sites in Glasgow last year alone.
The authority was recorded to have spent twice the amount of money than the next highest spending UK
council and more than five times the amount of neighbouring North Lanarkshire – which spent £ 120,000 on cleaning graffiti in 2019.
Although GGC came in as the UK’s biggest spender, the local authority could not provide the number of recorded graffiti incidents that had occurred in the area in 2019.
Graffiti includes painting, writing, soiling, marking and defacing property.
Damaging a property with graffiti in Scotland is considered a criminal offence where culprits can face a maximum fine of £ 10,000 or a prison sentence of up to three months.
Councillor Thomas Kerr said his email inbox is “overflowing” with complaints.
He said: “My inbox is as overflowing as my constituents’ bins with complaints
about the cleanliness of our city and the prevalence of graffiti is just another example of how the physical infrastructure of our city is being allowed to decay under the SNP’s watch. We are spending more than twice the amount of the next highest spending local authority and more than five times the amount of neighbouring North Lanarkshire Council. The SNP need to get a grip of this situation.”
A GGC spokeswoman said: “Removing unwanted, often offensive graffiti is a costly exercise and the perpetrators should be ashamed for making their fellow Glaswegians pay the price of their stupidity. Every pound the city has to spend clearing up after vandals could have been invested in something [ the city] needs.”