13th October 2011

WEYMOUTH: Row over removal of Olympic graffiti

By Harry Walton

A ROW has erupted over claims that council staff ignored English Heritage guidelines and carried out unauthorised work to remove offensive anti-Olympic graffiti from Weymouth’s Nothe Fort.

Original graffiti was quite faint, but vandals returned and used white paint to daub “**** THE OLYMPICS” in much more prominent block capital letters on one of the Fort’s main retaining walls facing the sea.

Now the borough council’s actions to remove the words have infuriated Fort director David Joy.

He said: “We accept that graffiti of this nature must be removed, but the fort is a scheduled ancient monument and all work – whatever the nature – must be cleared first by English Heritage.

“I personally told the council this and added that I was obtaining clearance, but the council just ignored me and went ahead and did the work anyway without permission.

“As custodians of the fort we must follow lawful guidelines for its upkeep, but the council seems to feel it is above the law.

“If we had carried out the work in the way that the council did then we could quite easily have found ourselves facing prosecution by the Secretary of State for breaching Acts of Parliament set up to protect scheduled ancient monuments.”

Mr Joy pointed out that urgency was not the issue since the graffiti had been up for nearly two months and he said it would not have hurt to have waited a day or so more for official English Heritage permission to be granted and a professional EH-approved team to have come and removed the graffiti.

But Weymouth and Portland environment spokes-man Councillor Ian Roebuck said: “I am certain that the public would prefer that graffiti of that kind of offensive nature is not left in such a prominent location in the town for visitors and everyone else to see.

“If someone walking down the street had shouted what the graffiti had said, then I, as a magistrate, would expect the person to be called up in front of me.

“It was a common sense decision to remove the graffiti and we had the power to do it under legislation.

“It had been there for quite a long time without action being taken and the decision to step in and remove it and not leave it there any longer is one I’m quite happy to stand by.”

A spokesman for English Heritage said: “The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, acting on the advice of English Heritage, has granted scheduled monument consent for graffiti to be cleaned off Nothe Fort in Weymouth in an approved manner.

“We are in discussion with officers of Weymouth and Portland council about the way in which the work has been carried out.’’

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