First of all, thanks again for signing and sharing this petition. An extra thanks to everyone who submitted statements and questions to the council committee meeting in support of removing the flags. 

For anyone who missed the previous update, we submitted this petition to the council to be debated in the Public Health and Communities policy committee meeting last Friday (16th of Jan).  In addition to our petition, 10 questions and 148 statements were submitted supporting the removal of the flags. There were only 2 statements that wanted the flags to be left up. Seeing the considerable amount of support for this continues to make me proud of Bristol.

The council have committed to removing the flags when they are in "sensitive locations" and gave the examples of "school, GP surgeries, places of worship". They have also said that individual residents can contact the council to have a flag outside of their house removed. They will also remove flags that are "fraying, in danger of coming off the lamppost and causing a danger to the people on the highway".

If you have a flag outside your house or notice flags outside of those sensitive locations or other locations that you think are sensitive reach out to your local ward councillors (find your councillor) and the chairperson of the committee, Cllr Stephen Williams (Cllr.Stephen.Williams@bristol.gov.uk), to try to get them removed. Hopefully, we can get the majority of flags removed this way.

While this is mostly positive news, the council still haven't committed to removing all of the flags. People will still be affected by this on a daily basis as they travel to those "sensitive places". We need to continue to call on our councillors and the council as a whole to do more and to stand up to the racism and intimidation spread by those raising the flags.

This petition is not over. As long as the council hasn't committed to removing all illegally raised flags we will leave this petition open. A petition can be submitted again after 6 months and if we can get 3,500 signatures from people in Bristol it will be debated at a full council meeting. 

What's next?

• Report flags to be taken down by emailing your councillors (find your councillor) and Cllr Stephen Williams (Cllr.Stephen.Williams@bristol.gov.uk).
• Pressure your councillors to remove all flags, not just specific ones.
• Share this petition so that we can get this debated at a full council meeting.
• The council will send a written response to this petition and have also said they will publish it publicly.

Read the statements and questions submitted to the council here and watch the recording of the petition debate here (starting at 41:45).