A £60,000 skate park in Oxford that took more than two years to complete has been covered in graffiti, some of it obscene.

Vandals have spray-painted crude drawings and phrases over the skate park in Fry’s Hill Park in Greater Leys.

Blackbird Leys Parish Council member Brian Lester reported the damage to Oxford City Council park staff last week.

He said: “I don’t like graffiti in any shape or form, but if it’s done nicely I mellow.

Our top stories

“But this is not nice or pretty. It’s not the sort of thing I want my grandson – or any other child on this estate – to see.”

The skate park replaced a facility in Cuddesdon Way, which had been bulldozed to make way for the Co-op nursery in in 2009.

The Co-op gave the council £60,000 to build a replacement park but it was not finished by Oxford City Council until October 2012.

Mr Lester said: “I talked to some of the youngsters on the park and they didn’t like it.

“They suggested having a graffiti wall as a designated area. I’m not sure about that.”

Oxford Wheels Project – a project to encourage skateboarding in the city – has previously condemned vulgar graffiti in skate parks, saying that it “ruins it for everybody”.

Steve Curran, a city councillor for Northfield Brook: “Offensive graffiti is just that: offensive.

“There’s a place for graffiti art, it can be very expressive, but not that. It needs to be dealt with.”

Graffiti has plagued parts of Oxford this year with the council removing 303 tags from June to August up from 237 tags in the same period in 2013.

Spokesman Chofamba Sithole said it was yesterday due to inspect the site: “We respond to graffiti incidents as and when they are reported or when officers out in Oxford spot them.

“Offensive graffiti is unacceptable and we will endeavour to remove offensive or racist graffiti from council owned buildings within one day of reporting it to us.

“Other graffiti is removed within five days of a report if it is in the city centre, or within 14 working days outside of the city centre.”

Graffiti can be reported online at oxford.gov.uk or contact 01865 249811.

  • Do you want alerts delivered straight to your phone via our WhatsApp service? Text NEWS or SPORT or NEWS AND SPORT, depending on which services you want, and your full name to 07767 417704. Save our number into your phone’s contacts as Oxford Mail WhatsApp and ensure you have WhatsApp installed.