August 9, 2026
Spray now, pay later
Banksy works cost public almost £150k
Brits are split: priceless public art or a very expensive spray-paint headache
TLDR: Banksy’s works have cost the public nearly £150,000 so far, with most of it spent trying to remove a mural from a historic London court building. Online, people are fiercely split between calling it vandalism and saying the real outrage is wasting money to erase valuable public art.
Banksy has dropped Britain into another culture-war food fight, after three of his artworks reportedly racked up nearly £150,000 in public costs for cleaning and security. The flashpoint is a mural on London’s Royal Courts of Justice — a historic court building — showing a judge whacking a protester with a gavel. Officials say they’ve already spent more than £85,000 trying to scrub it off and guard the site, with lasers, scaffolding and even possible new railings now in the mix. Yes, railings. For one painting.
But in the comments, the real show begins. One camp is basically yelling, “Just leave it alone!” with users arguing the government is burning cash to destroy something that could be worth far more than the cleanup bill. One person shrugged it off as “a rounding error to support the arts,” while another went full savage, saying the real defacement was the cleanup itself. On the other side are people furious that taxpayers are paying to deal with what they see as vandalism on a protected public building.
Then came the galaxy-brain take: if original Banksy pieces can be worth millions, is the public cost actually way higher because officials are erasing something valuable? That argument turned a simple cleanup story into a deliciously messy debate about art, money, tourism, public property and whether Banksy is a folk hero with a stencil or just the UK’s most expensive nuisance. The wall got painted, but the comments section is where things really exploded.
Key Points
- •Three Banksy artworks have cost taxpayers almost £150,000 so far in cleaning and security, according to FOI disclosures cited by the BBC.
- •The biggest expense is linked to a mural that appeared on the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 8 September 2025.
- •The Ministry of Justice said it spent £50,000 on paint removal and £35,300 on overtime and security at the court site.
- •The Metropolitan Police said they received a report of criminal damage, no arrests have been made, and the investigation remains ongoing.
- •Initial cleaning attempts were unsuccessful, contractors are using laser technology, and further steps could include more cleaning, stone replacement, and installation of railings pending consent.