HEREFORDSHIRE Coun-cil claims to be on top of graffiti in Hereford city centre have been rubbished.

Councillor Mark Hubb-ard, who represents the authority’s central ward, told its environment scr-utiny committee that he couldn’t believe reports that showed graffiti and fly-posting in the city centre was at a low level.

Coun Hubbard said his ward had an “horrendous problem” with graffiti, so bad that locals and even victims were doing their own clean-ups.

“Tags are everywhere, I can’t believe it has improved,” he said.

Members heard criticism of a system that saw victims of graffiti attacks potentially face prosecution themselves for environmental offences if it was not cleaned up.

The council could loan clean-up kit to victims, the committee heard.

Against this were statistics put to the committee that showed the council was doing comparatively well in dealing with the likes of litter, graffiti, and flyposting.

A new local environmental quality report, for April 2007 to March 2008, ranked the county’s overall standard as “good and satisfactory against the national average”.

Monitoring also showed a “very low level” of graffiti and fly-posting, the committee heard.