There’s been quite a few emails flying around between councillors about graffiti in Rayleigh, after a resident complained by email to a number of councillors.
So we were interested to see the following appear on FixMyStreet yesterday – with a follow-up comment from someone:
That last comment is interesting – councillors were told this week that work on removing graffiti had stopped to await better weather, not stopped because of the budget! 😕 We will check on this….
This also shows how useful FixMyStreet can be. The County Council would like everyone to use their own system for reporting stuff – but FixMyStreet allows members of the public to communicate with one another…
The problem of graffiti ( or more correctly criminal damage ) has rapidly moved from a few teenage scribbles to a number of youths engaged in some sort to tag war. The area is becoming covered in these “tags” which is making the place look terrible.
I do not accept the cost excuse, if its true, from RDC, this has to be taken seriously and funds allocated to clean it up as soon as it appears. Also the police must allocate resources to catching these kids and following through with a court appearance. I urge every reader of this site to report any instance of graffiti through the fix my street site or via your local councillor.
I have been away from Rayleigh for two months and returned last week. I was quite shocked / disappointed to see the level of grafitti in Rayleigh now. No one seems to be tackling it, its so frustrating. Mark Francois assured me in July 2012 he was going to get something done about it.
Dave A, have you been in contact with Mark again ?
I simply cannot believe that so few people seem care about this issue, apathy rules….
The District Council has now told us that as of 28 Feb they still had £1012 remaining enough for two days with the contractor.
Has the bus shelter been cleaned? The mess left by the builders, and by this I mean to the grass verge has been reported to highways. Hopefully it will all be made good before the builders leave the site.
Isn’t Grafitti cleaning a task suitable for those serving unpaid work orders? Perhaps the council could reduce it’s cost by using Community Payback teams in this way.
Now that seems like a very sensible idea. Perhaps people under a community service order for graffiti could be gainfully employed cleaning it off – they might not do it again if they had to clean it up.
I saw in the local newspaper a few months ago that a councillor was taking ‘ownership’ of this, their picture was shown along with a wall of grafitti. I haven’t seen any update on this, just the graffiti in the town getting worse.
I have to come out of “retirement” to declare that I am, or was not, Pam….
Sorry, should have said am not….
Pam, welcome to onlineFOCUS!
And Rayleigh Resident , welcome back (even if it is only for tonight)
Grafitti in Rochford has also got noticably worse in the past two weeks – I am not sure if this is reflected in the crime/ASB statistics yet though (if the incidences have even been reported).