City of Lincoln Council and Lincolnshire Police have joined together to tackle the growth of illegal graffiti tags in the city.
Over the past couple of years, Lincoln has seen a significant increase in the amount of graffiti appearing around the city, with particular tags becoming very prominent.
Graffiti and tags are both classed as criminal damage and, if caught, could result in those responsible being left with a criminal record.
Cleaning the tags from buildings across the city is becoming evermore expensive and time consuming for the council, with thousands of pounds spent over the past year.
Graffiti carried out without permission is vandalism and, as such, can have a significant negative impact on the city’s communities.
Cllr Bob Bushell, Portfolio Holder for Remarkable Place at City of Lincoln Council, said: “After taking an opportunity to clean up graffiti during the covid lock-down period, it seems that a few individuals are now defacing areas of our city with their tags.
“We are working with our contractor to use a range of ways to remove these, including pressure washing or painting over them, but doing so diverts scarce resources from other work that could improve the city.
“We are working hard with Lincolnshire Police to identify the few individuals doing this and, when identified, we aim to seek recovery of all the costs of removing their vandalism.”
Superintendent Phil Baker of Lincolnshire Police said: “Sadly, a few individuals are greatly impacting on the look and feel of the city, as graffiti can have impact on peoples’ feeling of safety.
“If we don’t crack down on this nuisance it may, sadly, only get worse. We are working with our colleagues at the City of Lincoln Council to identify those responsible, which includes reviewing CCTV to trace the offenders, and we encourage residents to make the city council and ourselves aware if they know who is doing this.
“We will always act on information received about those responsible and urge anyone with any information regarding this graffiti to contact us.”
If you have information to share with police about these incidents and who may be responsible, you can do this by calling 101 or by reporting online.