ORGANISATIONS across the town are battling to keep on top of a growing amount of graffiti appearing throughout Andover.

In recent months, a number of writings have appeared on walls across the town, including a number featuring the ‘Ease’ tag.

The graffiti has been seen in the High Street, Waterloo Court, Union Street, Vigo Road and more areas, including the Vigo roundabout underpass which was previously decorated with a public mural.

The borough council has been tackling the issue, however many of the affected areas belong to different organisations, making it difficult to coordinate a complete clean-up.

One councillor told the Advertiser: “The thing is what’s got to be taken into consideration is that all the land belongs to different people – housing associations, Hampshire County Council, Aster, Test Valley Borough Council.

“And they have to take it all off with a special chemical. You can’t just go down and wash it off.”

As well as cleaning up the affected walls, the borough council has been sharing social media posts in a bid to deter people from painting those areas in the first place.

The same councillor also suggested the idea of creating a dedicated space where people are allowed to graffiti, adding: “We have got this wonderful art, maybe it needs something somewhere as a dedicated wall that they can graffiti on and then they paint it over.

“Maybe something like that we have to look at.”

The borough council’s environmental portfolio holder, councillor Alison Johnston, said: “We are aware of graffiti tags that are unfortunately appearing around Andover which is taking hours and hours of staff time to clean up.

“The council is working with the police and other organisations in the community to try to find out who may be responsible.

“We would continue to encourage anyone who spots these tags to contact the council as soon as they are able so we can arrange to remove it if it is on a building or structure under the authority’s responsibility, or work with other private landowners where possible.”