City of York Council's Neighbourhood Services team is making use of city centre CCTV to tackle problems with graffiti in Spurriergate and Coney Street.

Liz Levett, the council's Street Environment manager, said: "There's been an increase in graffiti incidents in and around the Spurriergate and Coney Street areas in recent weeks. It appears that most of the incidents occur late night or extremely early morning.

"It is both time consuming and expensive to keep cleaning the area up so the CCTV operators have agreed to keep a particular eye out for any graffiting in this area and, if anything is spotted, to obtain as much evidence as possible so we can take the necessary action against the culprits. The operators will also be contacting the police in an effort to catch the graffiti vandals in the act."

The initiative forms part of the council's month-long blitz of areas blighted by graffiti.

The focus on graffiti is the third campaign of the council's York Neighbourhood Pride scheme, which aims to build on the work of York Pride. It focuses on issues that concern residents, such as the look of their local environment and feeling safe.