No Graffiti Policy at Glenurquhart Road?

Graffiti was mentioned again at the River CC meeting, it was also mentioned at theRiver meeting before that. Oor Graham admitted that he hadn’t seen it yet and neither had Liz it seems but some of it has been there for several months. The local authority seems to lack equipment. One of the regular Gurnites witnessed three men sent to try and remove graffiti off the Jubilee bridge – they had a pail of water and a scrubbing brush. Is it beyond the wit of our elected councillors and highly paid officials to clean up the graffiti on public property?

What is the Highland Council’s policy on graffiti? This observer tried searching their website to find out the policy and couldn’t find anything. A website graffitihotline.uk gave some idea of a local authority’s responsibility when it comes to graffiti removal:

“Each Council is responsible for removing graffiti from their Council owned properties, parks and the highway, which includes lamp post, traffic lights, rubbish bins and benches. But the policy varies from Council to Council for clearing private properties, commercial properties, utility boxes and other street furniture that is not owned by them. To find out what you Council's policy is select your Council here.”

This observer had a look at the drop down menu for Highland Council – nothing there. Just to say that Highland are not on the list doesn’t mean to say they don’t have a policy however. If any of our regular readers from the Glenurquart Rd ISP are browsing this article perhaps you could inform the Gurn if you have such a policy. Anyway, Aberdeen were top of the list and this is their policy:

“Aberdeen Council aims to remove obscene and racist graffiti within 24 working hours of it being reported and all other reported graffiti as resources allow.

The service is free for graffiti on publicly owned land, street furniture and buildings. There is a charge for graffiti removal from private and commercial premises. To contact Aberdeen Council please telephone 08456 080910 or for more information please see their graffiti pages by clicking here.

Graffiti can be reported online to the Building Cleaning Services of Aberdeen Council or by telephone to Environmental Services”

Along at Moray (not on the graffitihotline site too) they say:

“The council will arrange for the removal of the graffiti in a timescale determined by the content with the highest priority likely to be given to graffiti which is racist or offensive in some other way. Please use our online form to report incidents of graffiti and illegal dumping.”

Please can we have some action on graffiti. It’s the sort of thing we pay our council tax for.