The council removed Banksy’s artwork over allegations that it encouraged littering

Council bosses have been asked to remove a mural – part of a £2m Banksy mural – after locals kept littering it.

The artwork – located on the side of a privately owned apartment building in Lowestoft, Suffolk – shows a hovering bird swooping down to steal some polystyrene chips placed in the jump below.

However, the skip disappeared in December, and the owner of the private property on which the plaque now stands confirmed that it had been removed at the council’s request.

The owner, who did not wish to be named, said: “East Suffolk Council complained about the disorder and wanted barriers, skips and preventive checks removed.

“We have it in storage. We’ve secured precautionary screening and cleaned up the area.

The move upset local residents of the town of Lowestoft where the mural was created, who claim that the value and humor of the piece derives from the placement of the skip.

He said: ‘It’s a very beautiful, important and world famous piece by Banksy.

It’s such a sad loss that someone took all of her meaning away.

You need to skip. It’s like eating ice cream without a cone.

John said the value of the No-Skip Seagull Painting is “everything.”

“It’s incomplete without the skip,” he said. Would you buy a semi car?

“It has value as a large painting but its purchase value is negligible compared to the value it would have achieved as a tourist attraction for the city.”

John Beasley was a tenant on the property on which the seagull was painted when it debuted in 2021.

He was pleased when I first reached his wall, but said the jump had attracted fly hoppers.

He said: I was stunned. I heard scaffolding being raised and lowered, vaulting being put in place.

It made my books look so much nicer and the skip was a very clever touch.

The skip is now gone most likely because locals used it like trash instead of admiring art.

“By the time my family and I moved in in 2022, it was less of a piece of art and more of a dump.”

But even though the skip was removed to clean up the area, many residents criticized the council for not doing more to preserve such an important work of art in the first place.

‘I advised the council to create a Street Art Trail and generate revenue for the city but they weren’t interested,’ said John Brandler.

Another Banksy piece has since been removed and put on display elsewhere, and others have been nearly destroyed through disinterest from the council.

“Not surprisingly, the board did nothing to secure the override.”

Mr Brandler suggests that the art’s high estimated value would have been greater to the community if the council had properly valued it, and claims that the piece could have brought up to £1m in tourism revenue to the town each year if properly the infrastructure had been put in its place.