Reporting graffiti on telecoms cabinets

Like so many, I’m getting very irritated at current levels of graffiti – and there’s a lot going on at the City Council to get it under control.

Most graffiti in our area is removed by the Business Improvement District or by the City Council and both have significantly increased spending recently to get more removed. Strictly, neither can remove it from another organisation’s property without permission – and that includes the boxes owned by Openreach and Virgin Media – as well as substations owned by SSE – and equipment owned by Network Rail.

Each of these has places to report graffiti – currently as follows:

• On public buildings, monuments, benches and bins
  • Winchester City Council – Clean My Street (or use the Your Winchester Android app or iPhone app and look for ‘Clean My Street’)
• On cabinets
  • Openreach – Reporting Damage or Safety Problems
  • Virgin Media – Reporting Cabinet or Manhole Damage (you can also post in this webforum)
• Near the railway
  • Network Rail – for problems on or near railway tracks.
  • At stations, use this South Western Railway form.
• On substations
  • Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks – Substation Repair

One tricky thing to handle is identifying which organisation a cabinet belongs to. Openreach has a guide to this (pdf) – but, if there isn’t an obvious logo or label (or even a barely visible faded one), the main trick is to look at the keyholes on the cabinet.

BT Openreach has triangular or star-shaped insert.

And Virgin has more conventional keyholes.

It’s always helpful to take a photo. Also write down or photograph whatever numbers are on the box in case it’s a useful reference. Openreach also ask you to use the What3Words app or website to get a useful link or set of three words to give an exact location – and I’ve also used this successfully with other organisations! If you don’t like using a proprietary system and want to use a more open reference or app, then the Ordnance Survey’s OS Locate app gives you easy access to latitude, longitude and National Grid references.

Any other comments or suggestions on how to get graffiti removed? Please add a comment below.