Community Protection Notices extended to tackle graffiti and brighten up city streets

Graffiti vandalism is an area of concern for many businesses and residents in the city. To help tackle the issue Community Protection Warnings and Notices will now be extended to cover graffiti vandalism. 

The council is committed to reducing graffiti around the city. Evidence suggests that increased, quick removal of graffiti from premises and street furniture diminishes the incentive for graffiti vandals, resulting in less occurrences. 

What are Community Protection Warnings and Notices?

From 7 February 2022, Community Protection Warnings and Notices will incorporate graffiti on commercially owned buildings and street furniture.  

This will allow us to impose timescales on owners of commercial premises and city infrastructure, such as phone kiosks and post boxes, to ensure any graffiti is removed from their property in a timely manner.

This will ensure we can work with property owners to advise, monitor and implement set timescales so incidents of graffiti around the city are targeted and removed quickly. 

Introducing measures to reduce and manage the amount of graffiti within the area will make our streets and neighbourhoods more attractive places to live, work and visit.

The scheme comprises of 3 stages:

Initially, property owners will receive a Community Protection Warning, giving a timescale whereby they need to ensure any graffiti has been removed. 

If no action is taken and the warning ignored, a Community Protection Notice will be served on the owner, imposing a specific date that they are legally obliged to remove the graffiti.  

As a last result, we can now impose fixed penalty notices or prosecute property owners who ignore Community Protection Warnings and Notices that have been served. 

How are timescales decided? 

Community Protection Warnings and Notices will include a timescale of 7, 14 or 28 days to ensure graffiti is removed within a timely manner.

This will be dependent on the extent of the graffiti, taking into account the size, height and whether specialist equipment is needed for removal.

Following feedback from the public consultation around the introduction of Community Protection Warning and Notices, it has been agreed that homeowners, charities and community run facilities are exempt from the scheme.

Quick removal of graffiti is key

Councillor Amy Heley, co-chair of the Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee, said: “The council is continuously working alongside other partners to reduce the amount of problem graffiti in the city. 

“Introducing the use of community protection notices, allows us to work with, monitor and impose timescales on commercial property owners to take responsibility in ensuring graffiti is removed quickly.”

What else has been happening to tackle graffiti?

Since launching the Graffiti Reduction Strategy, we have been working alongside partner agencies, such as the police, introducing a variety of measures to help combat the growing issue of graffiti vandalism.  

London Road graffiti removal

One of these is targeting graffiti vandalism on London Road.  Where, over the last 3 months, this area of the city has been monitored for graffiti, with the aim of removing it within 24 hours.

This project finishes at the end of January 2022, although has been used to target graffiti on one of the main routes into the city, which, unfortunately is a hotspot for this type of vandalism.

So far, the team have carried out 200 graffiti removals, making the area a nicer place for everyone to live, work and visit.

Reporting offensive graffiti and stickering

If you see hate-based or offensive graffiti or stickering, please report it to Cityclean.

We aim to remove offensive graffiti and stickering within 24 hours of it being reported to us.

We will gather evidence and work with Sussex Police to prosecute offenders.

Call our environmental enforcement hotline on 01273 295063 or report online on environmental clean-up request form.

The phone line is open from 7.30am to 3.30pm Monday to Friday, with voicemail outside these hours.

By reporting you’re helping to reduce the harm caused by offensive graffiti and stickering and helping us tackle offenders.

We only remove graffiti when it’s offensive or on council property. You can find information about removing graffiti on private property on our what to do about graffiti webpage.