Street cabinets transformed

The telecommunication street cabinets used by telephone and broadband suppliers are often defaced with drawings with marker pens and aerosol sprays and the fixing of flyposters.

 The council's Development Management has undertaken a project that treats street cabinets with an anti-defacement coating, which will prevent future cases of graffiti and fly posting on cabinets in highly visible locations.

 The project to reduce the number of eyesores on the cabinets is the third batch of street cabinets undertaken in the last three years, with the aim of this particular batch being to treat a high number of cabinets within one area.

 The first and second phases involved cabinets in high profile locations such as gateway sites into the Borough, town centres and major routes.

 The area chosen to target for this phase of treatment was Tipton which has a high number of cabinets heavily vandalised with graffiti

 "This has been a very successful project and it will mean that these cabinets will remain clean and free from the awful graffiti which sadly is all too evident insome areas," said Councillor Ian Jones, cabinet member for neighbourhoods services.

 "The treatment is an excellent way of preventing graffiti from both permanent marker pens and aerosol sprays but also stops posters from sticking to the cabinets," he said.

 "The cash for this last tranche of works was provided through the Grot Spots scheme and match-funding from BT Openreach and Virgin Media for the treatment of their cabinets," he said.

 If further funding was made available, cabinets would be targeted on a town by town basis treating as many cabinets as possible, he said.