A £75,000 sculpture has been targeted by graffiti vandals for the second time in less than a year.

The 7ft Walking Woman outside Fenwick department store in Colchester High Street had black paint daubed onto her forehead.

The bronze statue, crafted by sculptor Sean Henry, was installed in March last year alongside Man With Cup, which stands at 4ft 6ins.

Walking Woman was tagged with red paint across her midriff in November last year.

Also targeted in the latest spate of vandalism was a wall at the entrance to Colchester Town Hall, which belongs to Colchester Council.

The vandalism comes after the council started a ten-day “deep clean” of the town centre, following calls to improve it by town MP Will Quince.

Martin Goss, the council's portfolio holder for Waste, Environment and Transportation, said: “Graffiti is vandalism, pure and simple, and is totally unacceptable.

“These latest instances are particularly exasperating, at a time when we continue to undertake a deep clean of the town centre and are asking residents and visitors to play their part in keeping it spotless.

“We don’t need to live with such anti-social behaviour - it is unsightly and costs the council money to clean up - so I am calling on residents to pick up the phone and report instances of graffiti in their local communities.”

A Colchester Council spokesman said staff cleaned the graffiti off on Monday.

He added: "While paint on the statue has now been removed, unfortunately the porous nature of the Town Hall stone means further work will be required in the coming days to fully erase the graffiti.

“We take graffiti extremely seriously and any evidence from our CCTV which helps identify the culprit will be passed to the police.”

Darius Laws, Castle ward councillor and leader of Colchester’s Conservatives, added: “For every penny the council has to spend clearing up this, that’s money not going on frontline services.”

The statue is the responsibility of Fenwick but it declined to comment.