Council's £15,000 Facebook spend for 189 followers

Simon Harris ran a number of social media campaigns for Essex County Council

A council spent £15,000 on a Facebook page which had fewer than 200 followers, it has emerged.

Essex County Council's social media campaigns costing more than £500,000 "did not represent value for money", a report said.

The money went to a digital creator and "internet prankster" Simon Harris, who said he was not given a chance to respond to the findings.

The council said it could not comment ahead of a meeting to consider the report.

A number of what were described as Facebook "groups" were highlighted in the draft report from the council's audit, governance and standards committee:

• "This is Your Life" cost £70,000, but "garnered only 1,300 links and 1,500 followers"

• "Never Too Late Mate" attracted 6,100 likes and 6,900 followers costing £15,000, but had "minimal engagement in the last two years"

• "Essex is Smoke Free" had just 174 followers despite a payment of £5,000

• "Essex Supports Veterans"' with 189 followers had "almost no engagement, and has incurred expenses of £15,100"

Labour councillor Aidan McGurran described the payments as "genuinely shocking"

Labour committee member Aidan McGurran described the level of engagement for these pages as "utterly woeful", adding: "The whole thing was a shocking waste of money with appalling governance around it."

He singled out the council's former head of strengthening communities, Kirsty O'Callaghan, for criticism over her role in setting up these arrangements.

Ms Callaghan also approved payments to a number of people with whom she appeared to have a prior relationship, but she did not respond when the BBC made multiple attempts to reach her.

"The committee have seen no evidence that any declarations of interests were made and have seen information that several declarations of interest should have been made," the report stated.

Simon Harris was contracted by the county council to set up and manage multiple Facebook pages during the pandemic and afterwards.

But the draft report said the contracts were of poor quality with no evidence of a competitive procurement process.

"The committee observed that the service contracts were inadequately drafted, failing to specify the obligations of the contracted party and the council's rights to information necessary for evaluating performance," it said.

The report reiterated a previous finding that there was no evidence of due diligence being conducted prior to these contracts being awarded.

Essex County Council said the payments did not represent value for money

Payments

Mr Harris was also paid to run the Essex Coronavirus Action Facebook page, later renamed Essex is United.

He passed on at least £163,190 to sub-contractors, according to previous documents released by the county council.

But he confirmed that he kept the remainder of the £530,000 received as payment for his services between 2019 and 2023.

Previously Mr Harris insisted the money covered more than updating social media content.

In response to the latest report, Mr Harris pointed out that the county council's chief executive's office had previously described the campaign work as "good value for money".

He said he had provided the committee and the county council with different performance data for the Facebook pages.

He gave a number of examples including the 'This Is Your Life' page, which he said had received 2.5m page impressions before being discontinued in 2023.

Regarding the 'Essex Supports Veterans' page, Mr Harris said: "Impressions for this page were extremely low because over the entire course of the project, I was sent little to no content to be amplified and shared.

"The work continued to be contracted and commissioned, and at no point did anyone from Essex County Council inform me that the work was unsatisfactory."