GREEN energy tycoon Dale Vince has refused to apply for planning permission to fly a Palestinian flag from his business headquarters, claiming a “shadowy group of lawyers” acting for Israel are forcing the council to make the decision.
The Ecotricity boss confirmed he intends to challenge the requirement for planning permission by the Stroud district council, which said flying the flag of a state not recognised by the UK counts as an advertisement under town and country planning law and requires permission.
Vince has argued that the giant Palestinian flag, which can be seen hanging from the front of the Ecotricity headquarters in Stroud, Gloucestershire, is legal under planning rules.
He said planning law states that “any country’s national flag” can be flown without permission and that because Palestine is recognised as a sovereign nation by 147 of the 193 UN member states, the flag falls within the meaning of a “country flag”.
“We believe the council are wrong to claim this flag needs planning permission and we’d like to establish that for the benefit of others,” Vince told Stroud Times.
“We will not be removing the flag of Palestine from our building. Or applying for planning permission for it.
“Nobody ever got asked to take down a Ukrainian flag. With Palestine it’s different and much of this is due to a shadowy group of lawyers acting for Israel.
“They’ve bullied several councils into forcing the removal of flags and into event cancellations – it’s a pernicious stifling of free speech on behalf of a foreign power.”
Vince has long spoken up for the Palestinian people and received £40,000 in damages from the publisher of the Daily Mail after the newspaper falsely alleged that he supports the proscribed terrorist group Hamas.
Vince said he did not accept that a Jewish or Israeli resident in Stroud would feel threatened by the Palestinian flag on his business’s building.
“Obviously, what Hamas did on October 7th [2023] was an atrocity but the atrocity visited on Palestine in return in the last two years is off the charts,” he said.
“It’s unimaginably bad and this is from a democratic country that we call an ally, not from a terrorist organisation known as Hamas. So they’re not comparable and I don’t think anybody that’s Israeli should look at the Palestinian flag and feel threatened. I don’t understand that.
“This is not the flag of Hamas and these are the shadows that UK Lawyers for Israel operate within, conflating the flag of a country with the flag of a terrorist organisation.”
Stroud council said it received public complaints about the flag, so “officers were obliged to take advice on the matter” and had no option but to police planning regulations as required by legislation, the Times has reported.
The council said that the display of the flag is currently subject to a live planning enforcement investigation, stating: “The display of the unauthorised advertisement at Lion House is subject to a live planning enforcement investigation.
“We remain committed to applying planning regulations fairly and consistently, and we will provide guidance to anyone seeking clarification on advertisement consent requirements.”
