Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department has issued recent guidance to local authorities on the flying foreign flags on public buildings.

In England, flags are treated as advertisements for the purposes of the planning system and are controlled under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisement)(England) Regulations 2007. The Government publishes general guidance, the Plain English Guide to Flag Flying, for local planning authorities and others on the need for advertisement consent to display flags. This was last updated in July 2021. In broad terms, the Regulations permit certain types of flags, including any country’s national flag, to be flown without the need for consent from a local planning authority.

Should there be a perceived misuse of this flexibility, the department is open to reviewing this guidance once again, and we would welcome examples of concern.