Graffiti removal across Oxford and Oxfordshire
In Oxford, graffiti tends to land where people pass: shop shutters on Cowley Road and in the city centre, side walls along cycle routes, garage doors, and the units on the business parks and industrial estates around the ring road. It’s the same story in Banbury, Bicester, Abingdon and Didcot. Tags that stay up for weeks tend to attract more.
Locus Services removes graffiti from shops, offices, warehouses, industrial units, schools, blocks of flats and homes across the county. We find out what the surface is and what the graffiti was done with before we choose a method, so the paint comes off without marking the stone, brick, render or coating underneath.
Graffiti removal: our work
Who removes graffiti in Oxford?
Oxford City Council removes graffiti from its own property, such as council shops, garages, flats and houses, and from public areas such as parks and cemeteries. It aims to remove offensive graffiti from those areas within one working day (Oxford City Council).
Everywhere else, it depends on who owns the surface:
- Private property: Oxfordshire County Council says it’s up to the owner to arrange the cleaning (Oxfordshire County Council).
- Bridges, walls and the highway: graffiti on county structures, road signs, bollards and street lights is reported to the county council.
- Post boxes and phone boxes: these go to Royal Mail and BT.
- Outside the city: in Banbury, Bicester, Abingdon or Witney, your district council can advise.
So if graffiti is on a shop, office, warehouse, block of flats or your own home, removing it is down to you as the owner, or to your landlord or managing agent. That’s the work we do.
Graffiti on Oxford stone
Many of Oxford’s older buildings are built from limestone, which is soft and porous. Spray paint and marker ink soak into it, and the wrong product or too much pressure can spread the stain, leave a pale ghost of the tag or wear away the face of the stone.
Historic England says it’s essential to understand both the building material and the graffiti, and how they react to cleaning, before treating it (Historic England). So on stone we:
- Work out what the graffiti is, such as spray paint, marker pen or paint applied with a brush.
- Test the method on a small, out-of-sight area and show you the result.
- Use the gentlest method that works, often DOFF cleaning, which uses high-temperature steam at low pressure, or a remover suited to the stone.
If the building is listed or in a conservation area, our facade cleaning in Oxford page explains when cleaning may need consent.
Surfaces we clean graffiti from
| Surface | Typical places | How we remove it |
|---|---|---|
| Limestone and brick | Older shopfronts, boundary walls and terraces | DOFF steam or a gentle remover, after a test patch |
| Render and painted walls | Side walls, flats and houses | A remover matched to the finish, tested first |
| Shutters, doors and cladding | Shops, garages, warehouses and industrial units | Removers that lift the paint without stripping the factory coating |
| Glass and signs | Shop windows, fascias and signboards | Cleaned without scratching or clouding the surface |
| Concrete, paving and fences | Car parks, yards and service roads | Pressure washing or a remover, depending on the surface |
Graffiti out of reach
Tags on upper floors, parapets and tall walls are often left in place because nobody can reach them. Our operatives hold IPAF cards and work from MEWPs, and if the platform has to stand on the road or pavement, we arrange the licence with the county council. See high level cleaning in Oxford for how we plan work at height.
How a graffiti removal job works
- Send photos: show us the graffiti and the wall around it, and we can often quote straight away. Larger sites get a free site survey.
- Test patch: on stone, render and larger jobs we test the method first, so you can see the result.
- Removal: at a time that suits you, including early mornings, nights and weekends, so you can open as normal.
- Photos for your records: we photograph every job before and after, for you, your insurer or your landlord.
Keeping graffiti off
Speed matters most: the sooner graffiti comes off, the less likely it is to come back. For walls that are hit again and again, we can set up regular visits as well as one-off cleans. We can also advise on anti-graffiti coatings for surfaces that keep getting tagged, and on lighting for dark corners.
Read more about our graffiti removal service.
Accredited and insured
Locus is SafeContractor-accredited, Constructionline Silver and a BICSc corporate member, and our operatives hold IPAF and CSCS cards. We’re registered with the Environment Agency as a waste carrier (CBDU320327).