Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost was to the public purse of graffiti removal across the (a) Highways England and (b) Network Rail networks in each of the last five years.

The Highways England does not separately identify the exact annual cost of removing graffiti from its road signs and structures, as this forms part of a wider contracted service which includes a range of maintenance activities.

Network Rail spends more than £3.5 million a year removing graffiti. This spending is devolved to local teams and it would involve disproportionate cost to retrieve exact annual expenditure. However, there is no reason to expect significant annual variations.