Council pledges to remove Medway’s lamppost flags
Plus AI to the rescue, brownfield scheme gets funding boost, news in brief, and more
After a month of flags appearing across our towns on lampposts, Medway Council has finally decided that they’ve had enough, with council leader Vince Maple announcing this week that they’ll start to remove them. But how easy will that be, and just how big is the campaign putting them up in the first place? Evidence on social media suggests the mass flagging may well be a small group of men with a pair of ladders. We’ve got the full details below. Further down, we have news of Medway introducing new AI technology that is definitely here to help, a big funding boost for the Strood Civic Centre site, news in brief, and more.
Hoist today, gone tomorrow
Medway’s flag wars took a sharp turn this week. After weeks of Union Jacks and St George’s crosses appearing on lampposts and roundabouts, Medway Labour, who run the council, said they will now start taking them down.
That marks a shift. Until now, the council’s line was that they discouraged residents from putting them up in public spaces, but no action would be taken. The new promise is blanket removals. It is also politically risky. Residents who have tried to remove flags themselves have already faced abuse, and local Facebook groups have been littered with speculation about ‘lefties’ prowling with scissors. Flashpoints seem inevitable if council staff begin pulling them down in broad daylight. Labour argues it has to be done, saying, “No one has given consent to poorly hung, cheap flags, which won’t be maintained in our public spaces, being used to push a political agenda.”
Their statement, posted through party channels rather than official council comms, also went further than before in its description of the campaign. “This wave of flag raising was started by individuals who are well-known agitators of the far right, and their objective is to intimidate minority ethnic groups,” Medway Council leader Vince Maple said in the video shared on social media. Cllr Alex Paterson emphasised the point: “If you are proud of your country, you raise a flag on your property. You don’t go out with a ladder after dark and zip tie a flag to a lamp post and then abandon all responsibility for it.”
Response from the Conservative opposition group has so far been muted, with no statement being issued on the subject. Conservative councillor Robbie Lammas struck out on his own, calling it “disgraceful” that Labour would decide when national flags can be flown and accusing them of prioritising removals over fixing roads, railings and roundabouts.
Reform branches in Medway also criticised Labour, saying the party was wrong to frame national symbols as something to be “tolerated.” They argued the Union Jack and St George’s Cross represent pride and unity, not division, and accused Labour of insulting people who want to display them.
Behind the political noise, the campaign itself has turned out to be surprisingly small in scale. One organiser bragged on Facebook that his group had put up “650 in total.” Photos shared across Facebook pages of those connected suggest it’s true. A few activists with ladders have created the impression of a wide movement in Medway. Some of the same figures are now trying to organise a protest march in Medway later this year, echoing the demonstrations seen in other parts of the county in recent weeks.
Since August, flags have appeared overnight on roundabouts from Bowaters to Rochester Bridge, many upside down or flying half-mast. The aim appears to be saturation, not ceremony.
Instead, organisers claim that Kent Police had given them cover. One of the group insisted on Facebook that their actions were legal and that Kent Police confirmed no arrests would be made. That line comes from a muddled police statement earlier this year that ‘flying flags is never illegal,’ a curious interpretation of the law. While that is true in your own garden, it is not true when you’re fixing them to public property, which the Highways Act 1980 makes an offence. The police never spelt that out, and activists have treated the ambiguity as permission.
The push for support outside the core group has not gone well. A crowdfunder launched by one flagger set a target of £1,500 to buy more flags in response to the Labour announcement. A week in, it had raised £180 from 12 donations. The pitch was to “put them up quicker than they can get them down.” The poor response underlines how thin the backing really is.
So the fight over Medway’s lampposts rolls on. Labour say they will take the flags down. One Conservative councillor says that’s the wrong priority. Reform says Labour are insulting national pride. The police keep out of it. Meanwhile, the activists behind the flags are plotting a protest march later this year, hoping to turn polyester bunting into boots on the ground. Whether that actually materialises is another question.
For a bit longer, the flags will stay up. Fabric orchestrated by the far-right that has somehow dragged the council, the police and political parties into an argument over who owns the right to patriotism. Not a grassroots uprising. Not a great show of pride. Just theatre on a lamppost.
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Bin days in Polish? There’s a bot for that
Medway Council has taken its first visible step into artificial intelligence with a new search system on its website, billed as a way to make it easier for residents to get information.
The system, developed by software firm Jadu, is called (brace yourself) Agent-Ex: Search. Rather than churning out a list of semi-relevant links, it is trained directly on Medway’s own website and is supposed to produce clear, factual answers instead. It works with text and voice, complies with accessibility standards, and can respond in more than 70 languages. In theory, you could ask about bin collections in Polish or Bengali and get a useful answer back. The council says this will make services more inclusive and reduce pressure on its phone lines by encouraging people to self-serve.
It is part of a wider project branded Medway 2.0. The council has chosen Jadu as its main resident-facing system in an attempt to pull together the various silos of data and create a (brace again) ‘single view of the resident.’ Alongside the AI search, Medway has redesigned its nuisance vehicle reporting process. Residents can now drop a pin on a map, pull in DVLA data automatically and track what happens next. The council claims this has cut manual processing by three-quarters.
The argument is that with councils strapped for cash, automation is no longer optional. Jadu says Medway 2.0 saved £34m last year. Officials present this as proof that the new approach can simplify services and deliver savings.
But residents will judge it on whether it works in practice. If the AI search produces wrong answers, how quickly will people be directed to a human who can fix the problem? How up to date will it be when the council changes its website content? Will the speech and language functions cope with the reality of Medway’s population, or is this destined to be another feature that sounds better on paper than in practice?
Across the country, councils are racing to embed AI in more sensitive areas. Stockton has used it to sort through resident emails. North Yorkshire and Teesside have trialled predictive tools in children’s services. Some authorities have tested systems to help decide when elderly residents should go into care. Coventry has gone as far as signing a data management contract with Palantir, a company best known for its ties to intelligence agencies.
Compared to that, a smarter search box on Medway’s website may look harmless. But it marks the point where the council joins the same trajectory. If it works, the website might finally become easier to use. If it doesn’t, residents could find themselves trapped in a new layer of digital bureaucracy, this time with an AI badge on top.
(Brown)field of schemes
Medway Council is set to sign off millions in government brownfield money at tonight’s Cabinet meeting (Tue 23 Sep), but as ever, the deal comes with strings.
The Cabinet will discuss a report that confirms £6.8m from Homes England for the old Civic Centre site in Strood. The grant covers the messy but vital jobs like clearing contamination, raising land, flood defences, and plugging in utilities. The 195 homes planned for the site won’t get far without it.
A second bid is in for Mountbatten House in Chatham, which could deliver another 164 homes. The catch is the same as for the Strood site. The council must act as guarantor. If deadlines slip or the homes never appear, Homes England can claw the money back, and Medway would have to pay. Officers say the risk is covered by surveys and cost plans. It is still a risk.
The reality is blunt. Medway’s big brownfield sites will not be developed without the outside cash. Developers will not take on the cost of clearing derelict land and fixing flood defences if the sums do not work. Whitehall fills the gap, but councils like Medway shoulder the exposure.
That exposure matters because Medway is miles behind on housing, and cannot show a five-year supply. That leaves it exposed to government intervention. Last week, the Planning Inspectorate overturned the council’s refusal of three blocks of flats in Strood. Councillors said the scheme was too big and out of character. The Inspectorate pointed to the lack of a five-year plan and waved it through.
This is a recurring pattern. Councillors say no, residents applaud. Government steps in and gives the green light. The homes get built anyway, just in a way the council has less control over.
Brownfield funding offers what feels like a less contentious development to the council. It brings forward sites the council actually wants to see developed, close to town centres and transport, instead of piecemeal schemes pushed through on appeal. It comes with strings, but at least it gives Medway a hand in shaping where growth happens.
The choice is not between building and not building. Medway does not get to opt out of the housing crisis. The choice is whether to take the money, back brownfield sites, and steer development, or carry on losing appeals and watch homes pop up wherever developers win the argument. Either way, the housing is coming. The only question is whether Medway leads from the front or keeps being dragged along from behind.
In brief
🗣️ Medway Council Cabinet is tonight (Tue 23 Sep), with a grim set of questions following the move to more public and councillor questions being asked there rather than full council. The Conservative opposition has put in 13 questions that all effectively boil down to ‘how much consultation did you do on Medway’s local government reorganisation proposals?’, while one member of the public demands to know the ethnicity of someone accused of committing sexual assault in Gillingham last month.
🍾 After being rejected the first time, Budgens have reapplied for an alcohol licence for their new store at Chatham waterfront. After failing to get a licence that would allow them to serve into the small hours, they have this time requested the ability to sell alcohol between 9am and 11pm. We wouldn’t bet on the licensing committee looking much more kindly on this version.
🚆 In other licensing news, the coffee shop inside Gillingham rail station has applied to sell alcohol, because sure, why not?
🚒 Part of the roof of the former Debenhams building in Chatham collapsed following a fire last week. Work had already been taking place to remove the roof, which the fire presumably accelerated.
🚏 Works to change the layout of Chatham Waterfront bus station started this week. The work will see the eastern side of the bus station made one way, the carriageway narrowed, and the central pedestrian island increased in size.
🚈 Medway Council are undertaking a refresh of the Local Transport Plan and is asking residents what they feel would improve transport across the area. Sadly, the form doesn’t offer the ability to demand a tram network.
🏢 Locate in Kent, the organisation working to encourage businesses to base themselves in the county, has entered liquidation. It comes just two weeks after Visit Kent, a similar body to encourage tourism in the county, also collapsed.
🗄️ This remarkable Freedom of Information request was submitted to Medway Council, to which officers responded that they are ‘confused’.
More Authority
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“I enjoy solving problems“
As part of our ongoing mission to interview all of Medway’s councillors, this month we speak to Conservative councillor Habib Tejan, the chair of the Business Support and Digital Overview and Scrutiny Committee. They met at the Ship and Trades next to St Mary’s Island and discussed what brought him to the UK, how he became a Conservative, and if the financial sector can now be trusted…
Footnotes
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