Borough council teams up with Redhill college in scheme to cut under-age tattoos (From Redhill And Reigate Life)

Borough council teams up with Redhill college in scheme to cut under-age tattoos

1:09pm Tuesday 15th January 2013 in Local News

Borough councillors have teamed up with East Surrey College in Redhill in an initiative to cut the number of local children under 18 getting tattoos.

Reigate and Banstead Borough Council said it has launched the team-up with the college because of fears that unregulated tattooists are carrying out illegal tattoos locally.

To get the message across, the council launched a competition with art students from the college to design a poster that would deter under 18s from having tattoos.

Borough council executive member for health, Rita Renton, said: “We are very concerned about unregulated tattooists who do not practice proper hygiene controls, and who may be unscrupulous about tattooing under 18s as well.”

Coun Renton said: “This could lead to tattoo-related infection through poor practice. “As reputable studios will not tattoo under 18s due to the legal age limit, it is the younger age group who are potentially at the highest risk.” She said: “We thought by working with young people we were more likely to come up with an attention-grabbing poster that would help reduce the number of under-age tattoos in the borough.”

Of the designs submitted, 24 were short-listed and judged by Coun Renton and local tattooist Sophie Zie-Carreras. The winning designs were created by Tod Heron from Reigate, Oliver Rea from Horsham and Georgina Lewars from Croydon, and will be distributed to tattoo parlours across the borough to be put on display and show they are taking a stand against illegal under-age tattooing, and will hopefully deter under 18s from going into the tattoo parlours.