Cardiff council has ordered the removal of some political posters for the Greens and Plaid Cymru ahead of May's local elections.
Plaid Cymru's Cardiff Central branch said that they had booked advertising space on the junction of Wellfield Road and Albany Road for four weeks - as they had for previous elections. On Twitter they made the claim that "councillors" pressured the company that booked the ads to remove them. However Labour-run Cardiff council refute this claim saying it was in fact the council itself, not individual councillors who asked for the removal because the 10ft advertising structure shouldn't be used for political advertising.
The posters, which advertised both Plaid and the Greens who are in alliance for this election, called on people to vote for the two parties "for the change Cardiff needs". Secretary of Plaid Cardiff Central Morgan Rogers said: “We had booked the same space a year ago for the Senedd elections and had the posters up for four weeks and thought it was a good idea and so a year ago we booked the space again."
This is the advertising drum before and after the removal was ordered:
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Mr Rogers told The National: "The posters went up on Monday and have now been papered over. We emailed the ad booking firm and they told us they had complaints from local councillors and said it could ‘jeopardise’ their relationship with the council. It wasn’t an approach from the council but from councillors. If they are being rung up by councillors telling them to take them down or it could jeopardise their relationship with the council then I can see why they felt they had to do it.”
However the council refuted this saying the advertising drum, which was put up to control illegal posters across the city, has always been off limits to political posters and that posters on there last year "should not have happened".
A spokesman for Cardiff council said: “This advertising drum and other spaces like it in the city are designed to help stop illegal fly postering. The council has an understanding with the company that manages posters on these hoardings that political advertising from any Party should not appear on them. In the run up to an election this is especially important.
“Once the council was made aware that the drum was being used in this manner we asked for them to be removed. This matter was also raised at the time of the Senedd election when political posters appeared on the drum - which should not have happened.
“We are aware of comments on social media suggesting that local councillors were responsible for ‘leaning on’ the advertising company responsible to remove these posters. In fact this matter was handled by the council as part of our normal rules and procedures during the pre-election period.”
