Black Country town in bid to get its own flag

Councillors in Bilston will write to schools and Wolverhampton College to get students to design a flag that will represent the town.

It comes after neighbouring Willenhall launched its own symbol following a competition.

Now, councillor for Bilston East Bert Turner has revealed he wants the community to create a flag that will put Bilston on the map.

He said: "Bilston is a unique Black Country town and it deserves its own flag and it deserves to be recognised as something different.

"Willenhall, or 'Umpshire' as it's called around here, has its own history and rightly has a flag to recognise that.

"Bilston is 'God's country' and I will be writing to the schools in Bilston and to the college on Wellington Road to see if we can get a competition going for our own design.

"I'm sure the people at the Craft Gallery can get involved too.

"We've a proud history of the steelworks, mining and industry and this should not go unrecognised.

"It''s something I'm going to do."

More recently the popularity of the flag of the Black Country has seen it flown across the world from the World Cup in Brazil to ex-pats living in Australia.

Organisers of this year's Black Country Day sold out of flags with 5,000 going off the shelves.