The classic design of a gold background and red chevron will now be recognised as the county's official flag after winning a vote.

The design, which was submitted by Staffordshire Heritage Group, fought off competition from Staffordshire County Council which submitted a rival design.

Its flag, which was similar to the Heritage Group's but featured a blue banner with a golden lion at the top, was beaten by 355 votes.

A poll ran on the Flag Institute's website saw 211 people vote for the county council's design and 566 for the heritage group's.

The flag will now be added to the flag registry as the County Flag of Staffordshire.

Just before the vote was due to go live, Staffordshire County Council attempted to withdraw its design, saying they had 'lost faith' in the process and would continue to fly their flag regardless.

But its withdrawal did not reach Flag Institute chief executive Charles Ashburner who declared the vote would go ahead anyway.

In a statement released after the final vote, the Flag Institute said: "County Flags have become an important part of our regional and national identity. Most English counties have a recognised County Flag, but Staffordshire did not.

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"The Flag Institute received two applications for a County Flag for Staffordshire, one from Staffordshire County Council (SCC) and the other from the Staffordshire Heritage Group (SHG), an umbrella organisation for many cultural groups in Staffordshire. Both applications met the Flag Institute's published criteria for applying, and both designs met the Institute's design guidelines, so the Flag Institute decided that the only fair way to choose between them was to give the people of Staffordshire an opportunity to vote for the design they liked best.

"The vote has now closed and the results are in. Voting was restricted to people who live or work in the historic county of Staffordshire, so voters were requested to supply their postcode (either work or home) and these have been checked against a list of all the valid postcodes in the historic county area."

The gold background and red chevron of the official county flag comes from the coat-of-arms of the de Stafford family and has been used in connection with the county since at least the 17th century. The knot is an ancient symbol of Staffordshire, used by many organisations, including the Staffordshire Regiment and Staffordshire Cricket.