Graffiti News

When a Banksy appears overnight, crowds follow. What happens next costs money. The Mirror reported on 9 August 2026 that three artworks by Banksy have cost the public around £150,000 in cleaning and security fees. The paper describes Banksy as an artist thought to be from Bristol.

One mural on the Royal Courts of Justice has run to about £85,000

The largest bill comes from a mural on the side of the Royal Courts of Justice in London. According to The Mirror, the Ministry of Justice has spent roughly £85,000 on this single work so far. The breakdown, confirmed through a Freedom of Information request by the BBC, is £50,000 on attempts to remove the artwork and a further £35,300 on security fees and overtime.

The mural appeared in September 2025. As The Mirror describes it, the image shows a protester lying on the floor with blood on their placard, being struck by a judge wielding a gavel. It was quickly covered with metal barriers and large plastic sheets.

The reason removal is slow and expensive lies in the building. The Royal Courts of Justice is Grade II-listed. A spokesperson for HM Courts and Tribunals Service told The Mirror: "The Royal Courts of Justice is a listed building and HMCTS are obliged to maintain its original character."

Westminster fenced its Banksy rather than removing it

The second case is a statue on a plinth at Waterloo Place, near Trafalgar Square. According to The Mirror, the piece is a figure of a man carrying a flag that covers his face, and it was erected in April 2026. Banksy took responsibility for it in Instagram videos.

Westminster City Council, which owns the land the statue was placed on, said it has spent around £60,000 on a safety barrier around the work. That figure also covers administrative fees and a security guard. The Mirror said it had approached the council for comment.

The City of London removed its police box and sent it to a museum

The third case is a police sentry box in the City of London, which The Mirror reports was sprayed with images of piranhas in 2024. The box itself had stood on Ludgate Hill since the 1990s, installed in response to IRA attacks across London at the time.

After it was painted, the box was removed from the street, at a cost of £2,200 to the City of London. It is due to be exhibited at the new London Museum when that reopens later this year.

The same artist, three different answers

The more interesting figure is not the total but the spread of responses. Three institutions faced unauthorised work by the same artist and reached three different conclusions.

The Ministry of Justice chose removal, and listed-building obligations made that the most expensive line item of the three. Westminster City Council chose protection over removal, which turns the cost from a one-off clean-up into something closer to maintenance. The City of London moved the object itself into a museum collection, and spent the least of the three.

Each choice treats street art as a different category of thing: damage to be cleaned, an asset to be guarded, or an artefact to be kept. There is no settled agreement in the UK about which is correct.

The cost comes from where the work is, not who made it

The point here is location rather than the value of a name. A painting in a gallery does not create this problem. Because these works are on a wall, at a height anyone can reach, and were never requested by the owner, all three bodies had to decide within days.

If the value of street art comes partly from being unauthorised and partly from being temporary, then every attempt to preserve it starts out contradicting itself. A mural under plastic sheeting is no longer quite the mural that appeared. Leave it uncovered and it may be gone in weeks.

Wallscape takes no side in that argument. The numbers and the decisions behind it are worth recording either way.

The wall you are looking at may not be there next month

What all three cases share is speed. The Royal Courts mural was covered almost as soon as it appeared. The police box left the street entirely. The window in which a street piece can be seen where it was made is shorter than most people expect.

That is why documentation matters. If you have seen a piece in its original location, keep the photograph and the location together. A work marked on the Wallscape map records what stood where, even after the wall itself has gone. The feed shows how the same process is playing out in other cities.

Original report: The Mirror, "Banksy street art cost taxpayer nearly £150,000, with bill expected to rise" (9 August 2026). The Ministry of Justice figures were obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the BBC.