Somerset Council says paint-protest clean-up will cost it £20k
- Published
A local authority says it expects to spend about £20,000 cleaning red paint from the front of its head office.
The Grade II-listed A-block of County Hall in Taunton has had paint thrown at it three times in the past two months.
Protesters want Somerset Council to evict a defence firm with connections to Israel from one of its commercial buildings in Bristol.
The company supplies the British military but said nothing is sent to Israel from its Bristol site.
The cost of cleaning up the first two paint protests, which the council said required specialist attention as it was a Grade II-listed building, was £13,300 excluding VAT and any internal staffing costs.
Paint from the most recent protest has not been cleaned off yet, but the council said it estimated it would spend £20,000 in total on cleaning and restoring the building.
Somerset Council has faced repeated pressure from protesters over its links with Elbit Systems UK, which is a tenant of a building the council owns in Bristol.
The Aztec West 600 building makes up part of the council's commercial portfolio, which it is in the process of selling off.
Elbit Systems UK is a subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd that is based in Israel.
Last week a motion was passed by councillors to explore legal routes to remove Elbit Systems UK as a tenant.
The council was later forced to apologise to the arms firm for incorrectly suggesting in a motion that it provided weapons to Israel's military.
The council said: "Elbit Systems UK Limited have contacted us to say this is factually incorrect and they do not supply weapons or military equipment to the Israeli Defence Forces or the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
"The council would like to apologise and withdraw the statement that Elbit Systems UK Limited supplies military equipment to the Israeli Defence Forces or the Israeli Ministry of Defence."
Following the vote last week, Elbit Systems UK issued a statement saying it provided equipment to the British army and that "nothing from the Aztec site goes to the IDF", branding any direct links with Israel as "grossly misleading".
A spokesman said: "We continue to invest and expand our range of services in the United Kingdom, providing critical support and advanced technology to the British Armed Forces from Aztec West 600 and other sites across the country."