Hackney Council Make Another Unpopular Banksy Move

By ABattisby | Thursday, September 03, 2009, 09:56

Residents have been left angry after another well known Banksy stencil was destroyed by Hackney Council.

The famous graffiti artist's piece of work has been on the side of a block of flat in Stoke Newington for the past eight years.

However, last week Hackney Council ruined the art, which depicted the Royal Family, with thick black paint.

The Hackney Gazette reported that the council have refused to differentiate between street art and graffiti.

Cllr Alan Laing, Cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said: "The council's position is not to make a judgement call on whether graffiti is art or not. Our task is to keep Hackney's streets clean.

"This cleanliness is judged by the government on a number of factors including levels of graffiti."

The council acted in a similar way over when Banksy left his art on a building in Gillett Square, Dalston.

The stencils were jet washed away by Hackney Council.

Sofie Attrill, 50, the owner of the building in Stoke Newington, was devastated to see workmen painting the wall black.

"I looked out the window and saw what they were doing, so I ran downstairs and I told them to stop.

"I was in floods of tears, but the guy was just smirking at me. I was screaming at him that he was trespassing because I was so upset.

"I suppose in my naivety we thought it would always be part of Stoke Newington and the street.

"One of the first things you see when you walk down Church Street is the Banksy. It gave thousands of people a lot of joy and we had people from around the world coming to photograph it.

"If Banksy wants to come back and cheer us all up, then we would welcome something fun," she added.

The council said it had sent three letters to Ms Attrill asking her to cover up or remove the graffiti. It later discovered she had not received the correspondence because the address was wrong in the Land Registry.

Picture courtesy of Hackney Gazette

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Comments

Looks to me Hackney's amended their website.

Let's look at Southwark's.

tinyurl.com/nl8esp

Same law applies to Hackney and Southwark - and Southwark seem to have no trouble understanding they must get the owner's consent.

By stokekris at 13:22 on 11/09/09
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Here is the link to Hackney Council's policy on graffiti, which they sent to me.

tinyurl.com/kpzsj9

It says "The Council has no authority to immediately remove graffiti from buildings that it does not own or manage.

When graffti is reported on one of these buildings, we will notify the owner/occupier and can undertake works by default if they fail to act."

But the correspondance was sent to the wrong address.

In the words of Stokekris "As per usual, it's a Hackney Nu-Labour **** up."

By ABattisby at 16:01 on 10/09/09
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A. It is private property;

B. the legal test Hackney must meet before removing "graffitti" is whether it is "detrimental to the amenity of the community or offensive"

C. if the above test is met (which it isn't here) Hackney must get the consent of the owner. If usual methods of contact are not effective, Hackney must post a notice on the wall.

As per usual, it's a Hackney Nu-Labour **** up.

By stokekris at 11:37 on 10/09/09
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Having read the story I suspect that it's Hackney Council wanting to get some PR for its 'zero-tolerance' stance on graffiti. Clearly there are many other places it could have picked on. I do agree that it is hard for a council to say what's art and what isn't but in this case they knew exactly what they were doing. Very cynical.

By gemma_charles at 22:16 on 03/09/09
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The council have got it wrong in this scenario by jumping to soon, but I do have a lot of sympathy with what Euan says - there is a massive grey area with this stuff.

"I agree with rharmon he has a great point. No offence was intended, it wasn't pointless, meaningsless scribbles or tags" This is the grey area in question. Who says what's pointless and what's not.

I'd pity the fool who had the job of walking around and saying which bits came under this 'class' of graffiti and which were deemed as worthy of praise and so should be preserved.

But hey - this is what street art is all about huh? Creating debate about the type of visual landscape we want in our communities. I'm certainly not with the council on this personally, but I don't think we should be making sweeping statements about what Dalston is like, and what everyone who lives here wants.

By DanSouthern at 15:58 on 03/09/09
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