The party instructed staff not to create any Pride-themed exhibits or stage presentations or events to coincide with Pride month or local Pride parades across the county this summer.

Reform says such displays promote a political agenda and says it has brought in the ban to create a "genuinely neutral safe space" in Norfolk libraries.

The new guidance comes weeks after the party ordered the Progress Pride flag not be flown from County Hall, a move that upset many staff and is one of the factors that has prompted the so-called 'rainbow rebellion'.

County Hall, the headquarters of Norfolk County Council (Image: Newsquest)

This has involved officials unhappy about the new Reform administration wearing rainbow badges and using rainbow displays on their computer screens, amid rising tensions which seem set to worsen as a result of the new library guidance.

The new policy follows criticism from Reform that the Pride movement is politically left-wing and that public bodies should not fund or promote it.

They also see it as a vehicle for gender ideology - the heavily contested idea that the gender which someone identifies as should take precedence over their biological sex.

Norwich Pride, which is taking place at the end of this month (Image: Newsquest)

Opponents of this ideology say it poses a........

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