During a meeting of the Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Council Town Unimprovements held in early February it was agreed to follow the Celebratory Coronation Celebration Working Group’s proposal to purchase 20 Union Flags to distribute between Smalltown and Dullbridge, with 19 flags allocated to Smalltown and one to Dullbridge.
SaD Town Council carefully mentioned that the flags would cost £47 each, cunningly omitting that the total cost would be £940. The funding will come from the 2023/24 events budget.
However, although the Coronation of King Henry IX was announced in early October, it took SaDTC until January to meet to suggest proposals and a further month to agree to do anything, with a spokesperson saying “The announcement of a Coronation took us by surprise and we didn’t really have time to plan for it.”
Now it has emerged that in the period between agreeing to purchase the flags and someone getting around to doing it, the cost of the flags has increased by £6.50 per flag, adding an extra £123 to the purchase price, meaning that the total cost of the flags will now be £1063.
The Town Unimprovements Committee agreed to the extra expenditure during their March 20th meeting. Hopefully someone will pull their finger out and snap them up quickly before the price increases again.