Beach hut vandal boy says: I'm sorry

The 16-year-old was one of a group of 'taggers' arrested in April after running amok with cans of spray paint.

But he put his artistic skills to better use when beach hut owner John Mackie wrote to the Youth Offending Team (YOT) and asked them to send a young person to paint over the graffiti on his pride and joy.

Mr Mackie, 44, of College Road, suffers from mantle cell lymphoma and has suffered two mini-strokes so was unable to carry out this work himself.

Bev Mitchell from the YOT explained: "We liaised with Mr Mackie and arranged for this lad to spend several hours working on the beach hut.

The lad in question was accompanied and supervised by one of the YOT's reparation workers, Kim Mooney, and she has reported that he worked extremely hard. "Mr Mackie popped down to meet the lad whilst he was there and this had quite a profound effect on the lad.

"The original intention was for the area of the hut that had been daubed with graffiti to be sanded down and repainted but, once he'd done this, the lad willingly volunteered to repaint the rest of the hut too, saying he didn't believe Mr Mackie would be able to do it himself and he wanted to help.

"Mr Mackie has told me he is thrilled with the work.

The boy is currently serving a six-month supervision order for his part in April's tagging spate.

Bev added: "I feel this brings the whole tagging saga to a very positive conclusion."