Emergence of St George's Flags on Lamp-Posts

1) Can you tell me the council's position on the emergence of St George's flags on lamp-posts, roundabouts and elsewhere via non-official origins in the past few months?

 

2) By conducting a keywords search of the authority's email server, please tell me how many emails appear, separately, for each of the months of May, June, July and August 2025 when searching for the term 'English flag' or 'George's flag''.

 

3) By conducting a similar search for any occurence of the terms 'English flag' or 'George's flag' (use the search term 'English flag'OR'St George's flag' ) please can you provide for me an output of the contents of email exchanges

on your server, redacted to ensure no personal information is included, starting with the most recent and going back as far as you can within the time and cost limits specified in the FOI Act - and not extending before 1st July 2025.

 

If possible within the cost limits of the act after fulfilling the above questions, can you please also provide the contents of any minutes or discussions where the emergence of these flags on streets and roundabouts was discussed?

In accordance with Section 1 of the FOIA we confirm that we hold information in scope of your request. For Q1 we asked our Highways service for information who have provided a narrative.

1. We recognise that communities often wish to express national pride, celebration, or remembrance through the display of flags and decorations. We appreciate the sentiment behind these gestures, and our standard practice is not to proactively remove such items from highway assets, including street lighting columns, unless they pose a safety concern. This approach reflects the need to balance community expression with the practical limitations of our resources and the importance of proportionality in our operations.

We do not actively encourage the attachment of items to our infrastructure, but where they do not present a risk, we take a pragmatic and proportionate stance. Our priority remains ensuring the safety and integrity of the highway network, while being mindful of the communities we serve. Therefore, we will only actively seek to remove a flag where there is a safety concern, e.g. where the flag may obstruct a sign, camera or similar attachment already fixed to the column, or a flag becomes damaged. For Q’s 2&3 we contacted our IT service to carry out a search of the email server. They told us; The Council are only able to conduct a global key word search across all mailboxes for the last 30 days. In order to carry out searches going back to May 2025, will require extensive resource to carry out searches on each separate mailbox individually. Whilst we would wholly refuse a request which exceeds the time and cost limit, our highways service did not require a search for any information; therefore, we are applying Section 12 of the FOIA at Q’s 2&3.

To locate, retrieve and extract the information in the time parameter stated will exceed the time and cost limit of 18 hours or £450. We can advise that a narrowed search (within the last 30 days) will enable us to carry out the global keyword search. We will search again on receipt of a revised request. A revised request will be considered new