Hackney Banksy artwork painted

Council officials have painted over a Banksy graffiti sketch of a new version was derived as the cover artwork for Beat Crazy 2003 single by the band Blur.

The work of art - a caricature of the royal family waving from a balcony - had remained intact on the part of a block of flats in Stoke Newington, east London, for eight years before Hackney Council intervened last week.

Officials dismissed by the drawing Banksy - whose works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds - for the most exposure to date in Bristol, ready to close. The exhibition has attracted over 300,000 visitors since 13 June, raising £ 45,000 in donations to the museum, and is estimated to have been worth £ 10 million to the local economy.

Banksy vs Bristol Museum had over 100 works of art. The artist known secret has been reported that secretly adding new exhibition facilities at night.

A blogger known only as Stoke Newington Kris broke the news of the departure of the artwork.

Workers reported that the Council said he had told his employers about the importance of the artwork. "We knew it was a Banksy, love." Stoke Newington is a milestone, we know. We told them, but they would not listen, "wrote Kris.

The building owner, Sophie Attrill, told the Hackney Gazette who was devastated when he saw the wall being painted.

"I looked out the window and saw what they were doing, so I ran downstairs and told them to stop," said Attrill. Hackney Council said Attrill tried to contact before ordering the artwork to be painted, but the ads asking you to remove or cover the piece had not reached its direction by the Land Registry with incorrect contact details.

Alan Laing, Hackney Council Cabinet Member for neighborhoods, said the Council removed all the graffiti, regardless of artistic value.

"Hackney Council does not do a trial over whether graffiti is art or not, our job is to keep the streets clean Hackney. We have made four attempts to contact the property owner to inform you of our intention to remove the graffiti," said Laing .

"We are now talking to her about how to resolve the problem."

It is not the first time that Banksy has taken his art in the street killed by officials. In October last year Westminster City Council removed a mural of Newman Street in central London after the deputy council leader Robert Davis said keeping it would be "condoning" graffiti.

In 2007, a piece showing a monkey about to blow up a bunch of bananas at Waterloo Station in London, was painted by staff.

• This article was amended on Friday, 4 September 2009. The original graphite implied that Hackney was identical to that used on the cover Blur. And the photograph accompanying our article on the original page are not a work of Banksy. This has been corrected.

Tags: Art , Painting