Businessman Slapped With £2,800 Bill After Putting Dozens Of Flags On Lampposts

A Yorkshire businessman says he is ‘disgusted’ after being issued a bill of almost £3,000 for putting up British flags on lampposts.

Will Haylett, 43, insists he was only trying to ‘lift people’s spirits’ when he started putting up dozens of Union Jacks and St George’s flags on lampposts around Scarborough.

Weeks later, he received an invoice demanding £2,785.50 after North Yorkshire Council took the flags down – a cost of around £36 per flag.

Will, who has been running a cleaning business for 11 years, said: ‘I was disgusted with the council. To solve the problem, I said I’d make a donation to a veterans charity instead – and they accepted that.

‘I’ve lived in Scarborough all of my life. For years, I’ve been driving around and seeing local people down and depressed. I thought, what’s going on?

‘I have a cherry picker, so I thought I could help lift people’s spirits by putting up a few flags here and there.

‘It was to bring us all together and put smiles on people’s faces.’

‘The council wanted me to stop putting things on ‘our’ lampposts. I thought, what’s the problem?’

So what was the problem, exactly? Well, according to North Yorkshire Council, you need their permission to attach flags to lampposts.

They also noted that It could pose a safety issue and that they had received complains about the flags going up.

The most shocking part of this story is that people are still putting flags up? I thought we’d gotten over that news cycle months ago.

I guess knowing that you’ll be slapped with a fine for their removal is a decent deterrent, as long as it applies to all flags. Best to keep them up on your own property from now on unless you want to receive an absurd fine in the post.

For the dad who spent 6 hours painting a St. George’s Cross onto the front of his house after someone tore down his England flag, click HERE.