TfL crackdown on graffiti on the London Underground is costing £11MILLION to this point
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A crackdown on the graffiti covering London Underground trains is costing £11 million annually.
Transport for London (TfL) commissioner Andy Lord said they have seen a ‘spike’ in Tube carriages being tagged, especially on the Central and Bakerloo lines.
Last month, in response to a Freedom of Information request, TfL said staff were working tirelessly to remove ‘one tag on average every three minutes’.
Speaking to the London Assembly budget and performance Committee, Mr Lord said: ‘We’re working very closely with the British Transport Police and our own investigation teams to identify and prevent particularly the hotspot locations where people are gaining access to the trains.’
In the summer, it was revealed that cleaners were scrubbing more than 3,000 spraypainted tags off of Tube trains each week.
In July, Mr Lord said TfL’s enforcement teams photographed the tags before removing them, in order to find and prosecute those responsible, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Mr Lord added that the vast majority of affected trains were cleaned when they were not in service, but noted some were done internally while operating.
The commissioner urged the public not to take cleaning trains into their own hands, adding that guerrilla cleaners could ‘put themselves at risk and cause inadvertent damage as well’.
Cracking down on the graffiti covering London Undergroundtrains is costing £11 million annually (Pictured: graffiti on the Bakerloo line in June 2025)
Joe Reeve has led a group of volunteers cleaning graffiti off Bakerloo line trains in London
A London Underground passenger sits in a Bakerloo Line carriage covered in graffiti in June
It comes after a group of unofficial volunteers were so angered by graffiti-covered carriages on the London Underground’s Bakerloo line that they took matters into their hands to clean them up.
The team led by Joe Reeve, 28, posted videos on social media of their clean-up missions and received praise from TfL train drivers and passengers who thanked them for their efforts.
Mr Reeve, who is the founder of a policy group called Looking for Growth, has been critical of London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan – saying he is ‘doing what Sadiq Khant’.
Speaking about wider concerns about the state of the Tube, he told The Standard: ‘I take the Bakerloo line every morning and I see someone push past the barrier.
‘Then when I get down to the Tube, every single carriage is full of graffiti. It feels like no one is doing anything to make the city better. I’m pretty patriotic.
‘I love London, and I think it should be the best city in the world. I had the option to move to the US for work, but I want to stay in the UK and see it get better.’
He added: ‘Sadiq has been mayor for a while and has said in videos he’s proud of what he’s achieved. I – and a lot of people – feel pretty frustrated with him.’
In October 2024, TfL’s first new Piccadilly line train was covered in graffiti just hours after it arrived into London and a year before it entered service.
The test train – which was being transported from the Siemens factory in Vienna – was one of 94 new trains built to replace the 50-year-old fleet as part of a £2.9 billion upgrade of the underground.
The act of vandalism is said to have happened early on the morning of October 14 while the train was near the Latchmere rail junction, close to Clapham.
In October 2024, TfL’s first new Piccadilly line train was covered in graffiti just hours after it arrived into London and a year before it entered service
London Mayor Sadiq Khan on board the first Night Tube train on the Victoria line in August 2016
In November 2021, A graffiti vandal who caused over £130,000 worth of damage to the London Underground claimed he was ‘creating a job for the person cleaning it’.
Bacari Adams, 33, was caught red-handed when officers discovered his favourite tag was the very same one tattooed on his knuckles.
Dozens of trains and stations were damaged by Adams totalling 77 offences – all committed across the city railway system.
British Transport Police officers first started investigating the 33-year-old in 2016 by interviewing people who said they had seen someone trespassing onto the railway, sometimes in the dead of night, and scrawling tags on trains and other property.
When enough evidence was accumulated, Adams and a second man, 31-year-old Jake Martin, were arrested at their homes in December 2018.
Their phones included decisive evidence, officers said, as it included pictures of their vandalism which they had kept as trophies.
Text and WhatsApp messages were also found which showed they planned more vandalism on trains and railway property.
In an interview with police in January 2019, where Adams was shown CCTV footage of him writing his tag on a London Overground train, he admitted the offences.
Bacari Adams, pictured, was jailed for six months after he was convicted of 77 offences relating to graffiti attacks across London over the course of two years
He said: ‘Sorry, I’m not going to do it again. I can’t deny catching me red-handed, only an idiot would deny that’.
Adams, of Enfield, was jailed for six months at Inner London Crown Court on Wednesday, October 13. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to destroy or damage property.
Martin, of Tottenham, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in prison suspended for 18 months.
The damage caused to the railway totalled £133,817.
