By Sarah Woods
AN OUTBREAK of graffiti stretching from St Margarets Station to a nearby parade of shops has caused anger amongst local businesses. The station and a row of shops on St Margarets Road in Twickenham were targeted and covered in tags of pink and red paint on New Years Eve.
Christina Crosbie, the manager of Olivers Food and Wine, one of the many shops affected, said: "We have cleaned it off the windows now, but not the walls as we can't get it off. It is only a recent occurrence, but if it continues it will really let the area down. It will make the area look run down, which we don't want round here."
Other traders in the street have condemned the act.
Simon Chapman, speaking on behalf of the Crown Road Traders' Association, said: "This form of despicable anti-social behaviour is not only an example of disrespect for property in the local community, but it is a considerable unnecessary cost to local independent traders and the council for its removal."
Richmond upon Thames Council are dedicated to dealing with this problem and are offering a £1,000 reward for anyone who reports those caught in the act.
They are also in the process of arranging ways to help the commercial sector clean up in an affordable way.
Tony Arbour, leader of the council and London Assembly member for Richmond, said: "If graffiti is on public property, we will clean it up. We already have a contract with certain cable television companies and part of British Rail and we want to extend that."
He added: "We are launching a kind of insurance for the commercial sector. They pay a fee and in return we respond with cleaning the graffiti instantly. It is in effect a maintenance contract."
Mr Arbour will be posing a question to Ken Livingstone at a meeting of the London Assembly regarding this outbreak and North Sheen Railway Station, which has also suffered from serious graffiti problems.
He will be asking what the mayor is doing to persuade the rail companies to improve the prevention and speed of removal of such offensive graffiti.
The police are also working closely with the council's anti graffiti team to prevent this kind of crime.
Simon Phipps, the borough liaison officer, said: "Part of our programme to prevent youths committing further crime is that we get them to clean the graffiti up straight away if we catch them.
"We do regular anti graffiti operations and did a successful one lately in Ham.
"We have an index of certain tags to try to identify people but this is often not enough evidence to prove a particular person has painted the graffiti."