Friday, 14 November 2014

Vandalism along the Durham coast

As you may already be aware from local press reports it's been a pretty lousy week for vandalism along our coast.

Over the weekend we received reports of graffiti painted across much of the Blackhall Rocks picnic area, including on the new interpretation boards installed recently as part of the Durham Heritage Coast/Limestone Landscapes Project improvements in the area.

It is estimated that repair and graffiti removal works will cost in the region of £6,000. We think that this is particularly hard to accept in these straitened economic times when the council and other partners are struggling to maintain services as a result of massive central government cuts to budgets:
Graffiti at the recently improved picnic area at Blackhall Rocks

Earlier this week we received a second report of wanton vandalism, this time to the barrier at the top of Deneholme bank erected recently to prevent fly-tipping in the area.

It appears that the barrier has been forcibly removed to enable unauthorised access to the beach, and again this incident will incur further costs from already pinched budgets:
The damaged barrier at Deneholme
Any information relating to either incident should be reported to Peterlee police on 101.