The council is looking into setting up a commercial graffiti cleaning service, charging businesses to remove tags.
Brighton and Hove City Council is buying laser cleaning equipment to clean graffiti from its own buildings.
A business case is now being put together to charge other businesses, with the proceeds being reinvested.
One thing they could be spent on is hiring a contractor to provide an overnight city cleaning service.
The measures are detailed in a report on changes to how the city centre’s streets are cleaned being put before the council’s cabinet next week.
The report, written by head of environmental services Melissa Francis, says new bins, more jetwashing and hiring a new manager to focus on the city centre have made an impact since last autumn.
If councillors approve it, the new overnight cleaning team will be introduced from May, tasked with jet washing, deep cleaning hard surfaces, removing stickers and graffiti and sprucing up street furniture.
The report says: “Intensive activity will be concentrated in one area at a time, bringing it up to a significantly improved standard before moving on to the next.
“This model reflects practice from councils such as Westminster who operative overnight teams and responds directly to feedback from businesses and partners.
“Noise impacts will be carefully managed through scheduling work in locations where nighttime activity is already present or where disruption can be minimised.”
The report says a new daytime team was considered, but rejected because it wouldn’t work with the “exceptionally high” city centre footfall.
It says if the council were to employ the night time team directly, it would be a challenge in terms of hiring and keeping staff and could impact its daytime team.
The report says: “A contractor can provide a more efficient and sustainable option by supplying the necessary staffing stability, take responsibility for recruitment and turnover, and potentially introduce specialist equipment and machinery that enhances productivity.”
Labours continued appetite for outsourcing services to the private sector shows just how much they value their staff and the level of confidence they have in themselves as managers.
This would be to provide an extra service to private businesses thay they would pay for.
The council isn’t responsible for removing grafitti on private property unless it is offensive / hate speech.
There isn’t any intention to reduce the current council employees.
I see little point in this – a friend runs a small business in central Brighton. Her walls get covered in tags, she paints over the tags, two days later the tags are back, she paints over the tags two days later…ad et infinitum
Except she is one of the (commedible) exceptions with most businesses not bothering.
Then they complain about all the grafitti!
Until 2023 she and others like her had no choice as Brighton council issued threats to fine small business unless they removed the tags. Fortunately they were eventually shamed into dropping this policy of victim blaming but it doesn’t change the fact that nothing is done to stop the taggers coming straight back as soon as a cleanup is done whether by the business owner or the council.
If they managed their current staff properly they wouldn’t need Extra night crews