THOUSANDS of pounds of damage has been caused by graffiti vandals who targeted vehicles and properties in Southbourne at the weekend.

Residents of Stourwood Avenue woke yesterday morning to discover buildings, including the Spyglass & Kettle pub, and a number of vehicles had been daubed with graffiti.

Dorset Police confirmed they have launched an investigation after receiving numerous complaints and a number of residents have been left counting the costs of the clean-up.

The Daily Echo counted at least four work vans in the Stourwood Avenue and Stourwood Road area had been plastered with graffiti ‘tags’.

Neil Blandford, who spent hours trying to clean up his van, said: “It was simply covered in graffiti, all over. I just hope whoever has done this gets caught. It's mindless really, someone told me there was a Mercedes done around the corner as well.”

Resident Cherie Wheatcroft, whose wall was sprayed by the vandals, said: “We didn’t hear anything overnight. I’ll have to see what I can do to get it removed now. The annoying thing is that I’m an artist, I could have done a lot better job.”

Other residents told the Echo they’d heard there was some sort of graffiti ‘tagging’ war going on.

Spyglass & Kettle pub landlady Sam Dwyer said: “Staff left here in the early hours of the morning and there was nothing here then. But when I opened up this morning, at 7am, between those times somebody has graffitied lots of buildings along the road, our wall and six vans.

“We pretty quickly painted over the one on our wall, but all the way down the road you can see it, and on the vans its just awful. Neighbours have been coming in all day saying, ‘Oh my God, have you seen what’s happened?’ .

“I’ve been here 10 years and I’ve never seen anything like this in that time. It is awful. I tried to read the tag but couldn’t really tell what it says. I’ve reported it to the police and they said they were going to send someone up here to have a look.”

“Luckily it was on our white wall, so we’ve just painted over it white. But some of the buildings across the road have had it painted onto the brick work, so I don’t know what they’re going to have to do to get it removed.”

Contact Dorset Police on 101.