Cost of graffiti to London put at £100m a year

Middle-class teenagers are contributing to the estimated £100m annual cost of graffiti to the capital.

A report by the Greater London Authority (GLA) says the problem is far worse than previously believed and calls for "zero tolerance" towards graffiti vandals.

The authors worked out the cost of graffiti to borough councils, public transport and the private sector. Their findings will reinforce fears over a general increase in street crime. In the past year there has been a sharp rise in muggings and mobile phone thefts.

A spokesman for the British Transport Police, which contributed to the report, said: "Two or three years ago, we considered the perpetrators as being from deprived backgrounds and single-parent families. But there is evidence today that individuals from well-ordered and better-off families are also turning to graffiti as a pastime."

Andrew Pelling, the chairman of the GLA's graffiti committee, said: "Graffiti results in unacceptable costs to Londoners. The growing costs encountered by the taxpayer and the impact on London's economy means vital cash is not being used to improve our public services."

The GLA has urged the Government to introduce legislation to ban the sale of graffiti materials to minors. The assembly also blames a lack of youth initiatives for young people "misdirecting their energies" into graffiti.

Auditors added up the cleaning bills of the local authorities. Together they spend about £7m a year scrubbing walls at schools, hospitals and businesses. Transport companies spend about £6m doing the same, the report said.

The assembly's graffiti committee has added to these figures the money it believes is lost through a lack of investment by companies deterred by graffiti, and the total comes to about £100m. The report says: "Graffiti has a negative effect on the lives of the thousands of Londoners who travel in vandalised, unpleasant buses and trains and live in areas blighted by graffiti."

London Underground said it cost up to £10m a year to replace all the windows on trains that are etched with graffiti, and millions of pounds more to remove interior panels that have been defaced and graffiti on the side of the tracks.

The bus company Arriva said 85 windows in a fleet of 25 new buses had been vandalised in one month of service.

Mr Pelling said: "We have tolerated graffiti as inevitable for far too long but we do not have to live with it or accept it as part of our urban environment. Throughout this investigation we were told about examples of good practice and educational measures which aim to reduce the prevalence of graffiti-writing. "Standards in London for combating graffiti are way below those best practices adopted in other countries and vary dramatically across boroughs. A graffiti clean-up is long overdue."

The Corporation of London, the authority for the City, spends just £1,500 a year on the problem, while graffiti costs the borough that spends the most, Wandsworth, £625,000.