VANDALS have repeatedly targeted seafront benches, leaving them with broken seats and missing panels.
Photos show the damage to several benches on the promenade in Hove, which has happened over several weeks.
Brighton and Hove City Council has now placed metal fences around the seats to prevent further damage and to stop them from being used by the public.
Work to fix the broken benches will begin in the new year.
A notice placed on the railings by the council reads: “Due to persistent vandalism and the marine environmental conditions endured by these benches, they will be repaired in spring 2022.
“Thank you for your understanding.”
Speaking to The Argus, Robert Nemeth, founder of Hove Beach Hut Association and Conservative city councillor for Wish Ward, slammed the council's approach to vandalism.
He said: “Not getting the basics right is symbolic of a wider issue in the city of obsessing over fashionable and niche protest issues rather than getting on with basic issues of safety, maintenance, cleanliness and law and order.
"In other towns and cities, where more sensible approaches are taken, benches are maintained. In Brighton and Hove, residents have chosen councillors who would rather discuss nuclear weapons at council meetings than actually look after our city.”
In June, vandals targeted the seafront beach huts in Hove, spraying them with blue graffiti.
The spray was also left on lamp posts, fences and walls along Kings Esplanade.
The undecipherable graffiti featured a series of letters and symbols and three number sevens scrawled onto a concrete pillar.
Just weeks before, vandals defaced several huts and an historic seafront shelter with orange paint.
The defaced shelter, 19th century architecture built to provide protection from the wind and rain, was damaged.
Illegible tags were plastered over the shelter itself and the pavement surrounding it, as well as three other beach huts.
In the same month, a police officer was struck in the face by a glass bottle, knocking her unconscious as police attempted to disperse a large group that had gathered on Hove Lawns.
Around 200 people were at the popular meeting point when officers responded to reports of antisocial behaviour.
As police attempted to disperse the group, one officer was hit in the face with a glass bottle.
In March, Brighton’s upside-down house was defaced with obscene graffiti which included remarks such as “f*** your house” and “help the homeless”.
Obscene graffiti was painted on the pavement and “free Tibet” plastered on a wall over nearby bins.
Brighton and Hove City Council has been approached for comment.
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