RESIDENTS will join forces to scrub graffiti from Isis Bridge despite cleaning up similar vandalism just last month.

Volunteers from Rewley Road near a city centre towpath cleaned up the graffiti from the bridge at the 200-year-old lock in October with the help of the Canal & River Trust.

Since then the taggers have returned but the residents have vowed to continue to fight the battle against the mindless defacing.

Archaeologist Tom Hassall said: “We are going to have another go at it today with the Canal & River Trust. I’m not surprised it’s returned to be honest, these taggers are doing it all over Oxford.

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“If they were caught there’s no point in fining them. They should do community service to remove all their tags which would keep them very busy for a very long time.”

The 70-year-old, of Rewley Road, added: “It would eat into their free time and the act of removing them would be very public. I couldn’t think of a worse punishment.”

Today the volunteer group will tackle the new graffiti near the city centre at Hythe Bridge Street but they said there was more further up the towpath.

Lib Dem county councillor for St Margaret’s, John Howson, lives near the bridge. He said: “It’s anti-social. It’s clear someone has no love for Oxford at all and wants to do their own thing in a way that is destructive to the environment.

“I want to extend the volunteer groups north-wards. There’s a lot more graffiti up the towpath and it’s clear the Canal & River Trust don’t have a lot of money to tackle the problem.”

Labour city councillor for Jericho and Osney, Susanna Pressel, said: “It’s so depressing that when the graffiti was partially cleaned off Isis Bridge by those residents, it was quickly put back. I look forward to the perpetrators being made to clean it off properly themselves as part of their sentence. Graffiti is blighting some parts of the city and it costs the city council hundreds of thousands of pounds to clean it off, which we can no longer afford.”

The Canal & River Trust maintains the waterways but looks to volunteers to tackle things like graffiti, litter-picking and vegetation clearance under its supervision.

Miriam Tedder, volunteer leader at the Canal & River Trust, said: “I’m really disappointed that this bridge at Isis Lock has been targeted again by vandals. It is unacceptable that some hooligans think it’s okay to deface our historic bridges with their graffiti scribble, but we won’t be beaten.”

The historic lock connects the Oxford Canal to the River Thames.

To volunteer to maintain the Oxford Canal visit canalandrivertrust.org.uk

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