Graffiti News

London councils recorded about 100,000 graffiti cases in 2025 and issued 77 fines

London councils recorded roughly 100,000 instances of graffiti during 2025 and issued 77 fixed penalty notices in response, according to figures published by City A.M. The data came from Freedom of Information requests sent to all 32 London boroughs by Neil O'Brien, the Member of Parliament for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston. Thirty councils replied.

Which boroughs recorded the most

Hackney recorded the highest number, at 13,613 instances. Kensington and Chelsea followed with 7,235, and Enfield with 6,149. Redbridge recorded the fewest, at 244.

O'Brien asked each council two things: how many instances of graffiti it had recorded, and how many fixed penalty notices it had issued. The first question measures removal work — a wall reported, logged and cleaned. It does not describe what was painted, and City A.M. reports no breakdown by type, so a single tag and a wall-sized piece enter the same column.

The enforcement gap is the finding

Across the whole of London, 77 fixed penalty notices were issued in 2025. Southwark issued 40 of them, more than half the citywide total. Twenty-one councils issued none at all. The notices raised just over £10,000 between them, an average of about £130 each.

Set against roughly 100,000 recorded instances, that is a penalty in about 0.08 per cent of cases. That ratio, rather than the raw volume, is what O'Brien's argument rests on.

What the spread between boroughs does and does not show

Hackney's 13,613 and Redbridge's 244 are 55-fold apart. What the figures show is how much each council logged. They cannot, on their own, separate a borough that has 55 times more graffiti from a borough that records it 55 times more thoroughly, because the Freedom of Information request did not ask how each council keeps its records.

What the MP proposes

Neil O'Brien argues for making unpaid work a universal part of community sentences, ending the practice of serving sentences at home, and directing the additional hours at cleaning graffiti, litter and grime. He also argues that removing graffiti quickly is itself a deterrent. "Getting rid of graffiti would be my first step in recreating an orderly and civilised society," he writes.

The piece is an argument by a sitting MP, first published on his Substack and reprinted by City A.M. It is not a council response, and City A.M. does not report one.

Why the figures do not settle the older argument

The question of whether painting on a wall is vandalism or art is not answered by removal statistics, because removal statistics measure removal. A commissioned mural and an unwanted tag are different things legally, socially, and to the person who owns the wall. A spreadsheet of cleaning jobs does not distinguish between them, and the Freedom of Information request did not ask it to.

That is the practical problem for anyone who follows street art in a large city. The public record of what was on the walls is really a record of what was taken off them. Who painted it, whether it was sanctioned, and how long it lasted are documented by the people who go and look.

That is what Wallscape's map and feed are for: a photographed, located record of what is actually on the wall, kept alongside whatever the council counted.

What happens next

O'Brien's proposals are arguments, not policy. The power to issue fixed penalty notices for graffiti already sits with every London borough, and the figures show most did not use it in 2025. Whether that changes depends on council enforcement priorities rather than on new law.