FI16305

Request

  1. Can you tell me the council's position on the emergence of St George's flags on lampposts, 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 occurrence 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. 

Response

1. Dover District Council (DDC) takes its lead on this matter from Kent Police who have stated: 

“Kent Police is aware of a number of instances where the Union Flag and St George’s Cross have been spontaneously flown in public spaces around the county in recent days. 

Flying the nation’s flags is always lawful. Furthermore, they are a unifying symbol of national identity and pride for many, and their presence will not be viewed as an expression of hostility or in support of any political cause or issue. 

Officers will not be arresting anyone or removing the Union Flag or St George’s Cross without a need to do so for urgent public safety reasons, such as endangering traffic. 

Kent Police’s role is to protect and serve the people of Kent and this includes not infringing on people’s rights to freedom of speech.” 

Dover District Council will follow government guidance which can be found at Flying flags: a plain English guide - GOV.UK.

Any flags found to have been placed on DDC assets or infrastructure will be treated on a case by case basis taking into consideration any health and safety concerns that may arise such as interference with existing equipment impacting its effectiveness ie electrical equipment on a lamp column.  

Highways infrastructure in the main is managed by Kent County Council and you will need to contact them regarding their position on this matter.

2. May - 0, June - 0, July - 2, August - 9           

3. These are attached.  Where duplicate emails exist, only one copy has been provided and listed in response to question 2.  This is mainly for the Local Government Information Unit Daily News of 19 August 2025 which was sent to more than 40 individual email accounts. 

All personal data has been redacted from the attached document as this information is exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act.  Names and contact details of individuals is considered to be personal data.  Personal data is defined by Article 4(1) of GDPR and also Section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the release of this data would contravene the data protection principles. 

Attachments

Attachment