VANDALS have struck at Toothill Community Centre urinating against walls and stealing flowers.

Centre boss Bernice Mack says she's disgusted and upset by the spate of attacks, which have seen blooms pulled up three times.

Bernice said: “We’ve got plants from one of our lovely volunteers and she spent a very long time planting all up.

“And a couple of weeks later the first lot got stolen. They were just ripped out. People had commented on social media how nice it looked.”

Following the first incident, some volunteers brought more plants to support the centre. But these were stolen within 10 days.

Bernice added: “This time they were not ripped out, they were taken out.

"It's like somebody has taken them to plant them somewhere else, but we don’t know if it the same people.”

She decided to raise awareness and tell people about what was happening.

“I put that on Facebook, as I was very upset. Our volunteers have worked so hard doing this.

"So, a very nice lady saw the post and offered to donate plants to us. She brought them all in because she was upset by this as well,” said Bernice.

“They did not last two days, and they have got ripped out again. This is not fair.”

She reported this latest incident to the police and on Facebook.

Bernice said: “It puts the area down. People were so pleased when we reopened the centre and we are trying to get the community involved.

“We are not going to give up. People want to bring the community back in and make this a nice place, the same as we do.”

The manager says there are problems with anti-social behaviour.

“We got people urinating but things like that has been raised. It’s happening quite a lot and it’s all adults and that’s not the image we want to put out,” Bernice said.

To bring the community together, Bernice has set up an event on August 24, featuring music and the grand opening of the community café.

She said: “It just to bring the community in, so that people would come in and see what had changed. We want people to use it.”

And to reassure the community, Age UK is planning to add more CCTV to catch the vandals.