A council has defended its decision to spend half a million pounds for an online comedian to share messages on social media during the pandemic.
Essex Council’s newly released financial documents reveal Simon Harris was paid the money for the purposes of "community engagement". The comedian, who has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity and ran the recently closed parody website ‘Southend News Network’, was given 34 separate payments by the Conservative-run council between 2020 and 2023.
Responding to criticism, Harris put out a statement on Thursday defending the payments, which he said were made during the height of the pandemic during which he worked seven days a week and was supported by a team of community managers.
Essex County Council told Yahoo News UK they had an "established relationship" with Harris as a contractor providing "digital consultancy and deliver via social media channels" prior to the pandemic.
The value of the payments ranged between £500 and £100,000 but together equal a total of £493,000, with £279,000 of the payments being made in 2021.
It comes as the authority announced on 9 January that they were raising their council tax by 4.99% to 'protect and develop essential services' from April.
The discovery of the payments has sparked criticism online.
Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, MP Lee Anderson, who claims he has often been trolled Harris on social media, mocked the council for its spending. He wrote on X, formally Twitter: “Oh dear. Is this the same Simon Harris who has been trolling me on social media for the past year? Sending my best wishes to Simon at this difficult time.”
Joe Ventre, digital campaign manager of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Wasting taxpayers' money like this is no laughing matter.
"While residents paid the price of the pandemic, the last thing they expected their hard-earned cash to be spent on is lining the pockets of a comedian. Essex County Council owe it to local households to crack down on waste and focus funds on frontline services."
Money spent on more than just social media posts
On Thursday, Harris told EssexLive he set up the Essex Coronavirus Action Facebook page as a "collaboration between Essex County Council, local public health officials and Facebook admins including myself".
He said: "The success of the work meant that other areas of the local authority and the NHS commissioned the model across a range of themes, including everything from reducing health inequalities to climate action, and operating peer support groups around these themes.
"The page was also utilised by local NHS services to amplify their own messaging about a variety of topics, and this has continued until the present day."
He said he could not comment on the funding of the project fully due to a police investigation that began in July 2023 relating to how information about the project was being shared. He added: "There were serious consequences on a personal level beyond social media and the Internet, and so for my own safety I was compelled to report it as a police matter."
Harris, who had a large social media following, has since deleted his online profiles.
Essex County Council told Yahoo News UK: "Much of the activity and campaigning concerned was amplifying information which the County Council had published and shared via its corporate social media channels, enabling the council to reach and engage with a much larger proportion of its population than would otherwise have been possible.
"The engagement levels the council achieved through ECVA and other social media channels managed by Simon Harris during the pandemic period were far in excess of what the council would usually have expected during a ‘normal’ period of operation." They also noted the payments covered more than just social media content.
Yahoo News UK has contacted Essex Police for comment.
Fundraising site GoFundMe confirmed to Yahoo News that Harris had raised "hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities and important causes on GoFundMe" from multiple fundraisers.
Harris's parody Southend News Network made national headlines in February 2016 when Southend Council added it to the authority's media database. It followed spoof stories such as one about the Dartford Tunnel being this evening due to a large group of more than 3,000 Kent residents trying to enter Essex illegally and one about cats become class teachers to cope with a shortage.
At the time, Southend council told the BBC: "Although their stories might not be correct, they've built up a following we could also engage with," he said. "People have been commenting on the posts with real issues, and we've been replying with facts about 'the truth behind the spoof'.
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January 12, 2024 at 12:12AM
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