West Sussex pothole graffiti messages spark council warning: 'We do not condone vandalism'

Graffiti appeared over the weekend in Chichester urging West Sussex County Council to fix several large potholes.

A photographer took a series of images on Saturday (April 6) that showed multiple brightly coloured messages on roads and pavements in the city.

The graffiti appeared around potholes and damaged road surfaces.

One message read: “WSCC: fix the potholes! We pay taxes!” Another stated: “WSCC! The state of our roads!”

One green message highlighted three potholes on the New Park Road roundabout that simply says: “Taxes!”

One message on Orchard Street read: “This road is an embarrassment to the city.”

West Sussex County Council has now issued a statement in response to the messages.

A spokesperson said: “We understand people’s frustrations with the current condition of our roads, but do not condone vandalism and urge people not to risk their lives (and, potentially, other people’s lives if they cause an accident) by going on a live carriageway to paint graffiti.

"Staff time and resources, which could have been used tackling other issues including potholes, will now need to be used in dealing with the vandalism.”

Potholes have been a talking point for the whole of West Sussex, in recent years and the roads appear to be getting worse.

Many drivers have suffered damage to their cars and action needs to be taken. A new report from The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) said councils were expected to fix two million potholes in the current financial year – that is 43 per cent higher than the previous year and confirms repairs are at an eight-year high.

With our new campaign ‘Gone to Pot’, Sussex World is calling for immediate action from those responsible for our roads.

A county council spokesperson added: “In the last few years, we have experienced more extreme weather events, resulting in heat-damaged roads, wide-scale flooding, wind damage and an increase in the number of potholes being reported. We have approved an additional £4million to support highway maintenance activities.

“We are also investing an additional £7million of capital funding in the next financial year, increasing our resurfacing and treatments programme to more than £20million.

"A further £10million will be committed for 2025/26 to continue the work needed to provide a resilient highways network for the county. We have approximately 25 highway officers identifying safety defects, both through routine inspections and by responding to customer reports.

"We have up to 19 repair teams dealing with safety defects and are looking to bring in more contractor teams to bolster these numbers. We are also using three Velocity road patchers to help tackle the volume of safety defects on the network.”