North Wales council blames removal of English flags for bad publicity

Richard Evans – Local democracy reporter

The removal of English flags painted on roundabouts in north Wales is partly responsible for generating  negative media publicity, a council has claimed.

Conwy County Council’s finance and resources overview scrutiny committee is set to meet at the council’s Coed Pella HQ today (Monday, December 1).

At the meeting, the committee will be presented with a self-assessment of the council’s performance, reviewing how the authority has done between April and September 2025.

The document scores the council as green, amber, or red in terms of how it’s performing, with green indicating things are going well, amber indicating they are within tolerance, and red highlighting a problem.

The authority has scored itself green in areas such as “local authority-maintained streets that are clean” (100%); “the percentage of waste reused, recycled, or composted” (70.7%); and “the number of people attending a performance at Venue Cymru and Theatre Colwyn” (213,547 vs a target of 180,000).

Another area that the authority has carried out a self-assessment on was “media mentions”.

The council had targeted 75% neutral or positive “media mentions”, but the number stands at 52.5% and marked red – with the authority partly blaming the “removal of St George’s flags” for an “increase in negative media sentiment”.

In 2024/25 the authority had scored itself 75% and 80% at the mid-year and end-year points, respectively.

The summer months saw a surge in St George’s flags being hung throughout the UK, including Wales, leading to tension and many councils proactively removing them.

The report also pointed the finger at “political changes” for negative publicity, presumably referring to a change in the leader and cabinet and, perhaps bizarrely, English flags.

“As at mid-year 2025 to 2026, 53% of media mentions relating to us as a council were positive or neutral, down from 80% in the last period,” the report stated.

“There has been an increase in negative media sentiment following political changes within the council and incidents such as removal of St George’s flags.”

The council has increased council tax by nearly 10% for three years running whilst slashing services and cutting school budgets.

But Llandudno councillor Louise Emery questioned the report’s conclusions.

She said: “I struggle to believe that the main reasons in this report for the council being seen in a more negative light in the media are due to political changes within the council and the removal of St George’s flags,” she said.

“I can think of other reasons why ‘media mentions’ about Conwy might have appeared to be more negative, such as double-digit council tax rises. I will be asking questions about this at the meeting.”

The council defended its use of the term ‘sentiment’ in “negative media sentiment”, arguing it was a technical term and not implying a held opinion.

A council spokesman said: “Sentiment is a data term used for analysing media based on a variety of media responses.

“During the period it refers to there had been many articles about the flags which statistically were not categorised as positive media. This term does not refer to our view of reader emotion.”