Public art work has been commissioned to brighten up bus stops and underpasses in northern Livingston but a local councillor fears the work of the community, including youngsters, will be destroyed by graffiti.
“I am dreading what will happen to this public art work,” councillor Allison Adamson said at a recent meeting of Livingston North Local Area Committee.
She added: “It’s bad in Bathgate, but we have never had a major problem with graffiti before. Suddenly there’s stickers everywhere. Suddenly there’s spray painting everywhere. We are having these new bus stops and the underpasses painted by an artist, and children in the community. How robust is the graffiti cleaning service?”
Neighbourhood Environment Teams manager Andy Johnston said that public art was protected with a coating which made it easy to remove graffiti often by hand washing. On other surfaces it was often harder to clean graffiti away by hand and power washers had to be used.
Operational Services in the council are in the process of setting up three teams which will maintain street furniture using new cleansing equipment. The set-up has been delayed by the Covid pandemic and sourcing the new cleansing machines.
“These will soon be in place and I would hope that we’ll have the teams working in three wards at a time by mid summer,” said Mr Johnston.
He added that contacting the council through the Call Centre would set the clean up in motion when graffiti was reported, but suggested that filling in an e-form on the council website would be quicker in that it sends job details directly to the cleaning crews mobile devices.
Councillor Adamson said she hoped that the quicker graffiti could be removed the more it would deter people from doing it as it was unlikely they would ever be caught in the act.
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