We’re reviewing how we tackle graffiti and tagging offences in the city.
We currently issue Community Protection Warnings to businesses if we find tags on their property and ask them remove or paint over them.
Councillors are discussing graffiti enforcement and we’re pausing enforcement against small independent businesses while we carry out a fuller review of the Graffiti Reduction Strategy in autumn.
We welcome vibrant and exciting graffiti art across Brighton & Hove, where the artist has permission from the property owner, but we’re struggling to keep up with the huge tagging problem in the city.
Tagging is a type of vandalism where a name or symbol is written, sprayed or painted, often over other street art and repeated in different locations.
We’re reviewing the way that we encourage all businesses in Brighton & Hove to remove tagging quickly to discourage tagging offences in the future.
We’re responsible for removing tagging on council property and street furniture, including benches, bins, signs and streetlights.
We also remove graffiti and tagging on all property across the city if it is hate-based or offensive.
To help tackle tagging on private property, we introduced Community Protection Warnings (CPW), Community Protection Notices (CPN) and Fixed Penalty Notices (FPN) to encourage businesses to remove tagging.
This policy affects small, medium and large businesses and organisations that are responsible for electric, gas, water, telecoms and highways in the city such as Network Rail and BT. These organisations are known as ‘statutory undertakers.’
While we carry out a review of the Graffiti Reduction Strategy, we’re pausing enforcement activity against small independent businesses.
We’ll no longer issue CPWs, CPNs and FPNs to small businesses, but will continue to advise them on how to deal with and manage tagging offences.
Larger businesses, including those with a regional or national presence, and statutory undertakers will still be required to remove tagging from their property or face a fine.
Further information on how to protect your property from illegal graffiti and tagging can be found on our what to do about graffiti webpage.
Councillor Tim Rowkins, Chair of the City Environment, South Downs and The Sea Committee, said: “We’re reviewing how we tackle graffiti in the city, and our first action is to pause enforcement against small independent businesses whose property has been tagged.
“Small businesses who have already been the victim of a crime shouldn’t be punished further through enforcement action.
“We know that tagging affects small businesses in a negative way and we want to do as much as we can to take pressure off small businesses during the cost-of-living crisis when the cost of running a business is soaring.
“Business owners do not want graffiti on their premises, and we believe they will continue to be responsible and remove it without the threat of a fine. We will monitor the effect of this approach over the summer and review it as part of the Graffiti Reduction Strategy later in the year.
“We have a community clean up scheme and encourage local groups to organise their own clean-up events which we’ll gladly supply paint and equipment for.”
We provide paint to residents or community groups as part of our community clean-up scheme.
If you’d like to give back to the community and clean up your local area, we can give you supplies to paint over tagging in your local area.
This can include painting over tagging on private property, including local businesses, if the property owner agrees.
To learn more about how to organise a community clean-up, visit our how we can help you to paint over graffiti webpage.
If you see hate-based or offensive graffiti or stickering, please report it though our environmental enforcement hotline on 01273 295 063 or our online request a clean-up form.
