A VIGILANTE flag remover has struck back at ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ activists in Wellington over the weekend.

Union and St George’s Cross flags disappeared from town centre lampposts after the town’s annual carnival on Saturday night (September 27).

There were reports early on Sunday of a young man seen using a ladder to reach and remove the flags in Fore Street, High Street, and Longforth Road, and also in the Red Lion Court entrance to the town’s Waitrose supermarket.

Dozens of flags were ‘raised’ at the beginning of September stretching from the Cades roundabout approach to the town right through the centre of Wellington and also in Rockwell Green.

A mini roundabout in South Street and pedestrian crossings in Waterloo Road and Tonedale were also painted with the St George Cross.

Somerset Council appealed for people not to raise flags on, or deface, public property and said it would only remove the flags as part of planned maintenance works unless they became a hazard to pedestrians or motorists.

Now, somebody appears to have taken matters into their own hands and removed about 10 of the flags to date.

Flags continue to fly on the Cades roundabout through to St John’s School, and also a more controversial scaffold-type structure with a Union flag and cross of St George remains in the centre of the larger of the two ponds in The Basins.

Somerset Council confirmed on Monday that it had not yet authorised the removal of any flags.

Town council chief executive Dave Farrow said The Basins ponds were privately owned and the landowner had been asked to take ‘appropriate action’.

Mr Farrow said permission had been given for town council staff to remove flags from the pond but when they did so they were ‘subject to abusive language and threatening behaviour which was reported to the police’ and he was not prepared to expose staff or volunteers to such abuse again.