Council did not appear to conduct competitive procurement exercises for £500k social media payments, director of legal says

An investigation into £500,000 worth of payments made by Essex County Council for social media campaigns has been unable to find what the selection process was like for awarding the work or whether there was a competitive process involved.

In an Audit, Governance and Standards Committee meeting held on Monday (15 April), the county council's Director of Legal and Assurance, Paul Turner, said: "In fact, we think it is unlikely that there was a selection process."

Commenting on the findings of a report on the payments, Turner told councillors that there was no evidence that any competitive procurement had been undertaken for any of the contracts or for any of the payments.

He also noted that there was no recorded conversations surrounding the decisions to pay the social media professional, Simon Harris, for his services.

The council made a series of payments to Harris between 2020 and 2023, with the largest payments being made during the pandemic.

In exchange, Harris managed a social media strategy aimed at delivering an informal take on the council's messaging for topics such as coronavirus, suicide prevention, social care, quitting smoking, veterans, working and travellers.

According to the report, some payments were small enough that a competitive process was not required, and in cases where a contract was larger, a waiver was granted, bypassing the need for a competitive procurement exercise.

The contracts themselves "included limited information", the report noted.

Speaking during the committee meeting, Cllr Aidan McGurran said: "We've all got some experience with contracts. I have some from my previous working life. I have never seen contracts as inadequate as these. They are woeful in many respects."

In a statement on Facebook, Harris said he passed £160,000 of the £500,000 on to other individuals or businesses at the council's request.

Analysing the onward payments, the report noted that Harris was asked to distribute money to others, set aside money for commissioning work from third-parties and pay money to people working in vaccination centres.

The report said Harris was "entirely open about the arrangement and officers are satisfied that he has acted in good faith".

It noted that he paid £16,600 to people who worked in relation to vaccination centres on behalf of the council, despite Harris having no direct involvement in the vaccination programme.

The report said that "it was probably not fair to ask him to make these payments" and that another solution should have been found.

Regarding the money set aside for commissioning work, the report said: "It appears that there was no definite plan for this money at the time of the payment.

"This was not appropriate given the limited control and oversight that the council had over the spend. That is not to say that money was misappropriated as there's no evidence that it was."

Harris said that the council found there was no record of why these requests were made of him.

He added that the request was asked of him in a "very casual manner, and not in a way that befits the handling of hundreds of thousands of pounds of anyone's money, let alone money from taxpayers".

Harris, who said he was told the payments needed to be made quickly and easily during the pandemic, was asked by at least four different council' officials' to make the payments.

He even received a regularly updated spreadsheet from one official about what to pay and to whom it should be paid in relation to the vaccination work, he said.

Commenting on the general process for receiving work, he said: "Although much has been discussed regarding how work was allocated to myself and others, it was simply a case of being asked to carry out 'x, y and z' and in most cases getting a service level agreement to sign so I could do so and get paid.

"Again, I have no understanding of how a local authority would usually do this, under pandemic conditions or otherwise, but I have to stress that I was asked to undertake individual projects based on a previous track record of smaller tasks undertaken for Essex County Council, and I agreed."

Harris has reported that he has a case lodged with Essex Police "over the way that the information was being distributed to numerous people".

He said he is not currently commenting further on the legal action.

A spokesperson for Essex County Council said that the committee has now made recommendations based on the report.

The spokesperson said: "The independent committee has scrutinised the information, which has also been shared publicly, and suggested a number of recommendations based on the learning and insight gained.

"These will now be taken forward with progress updates presented to the committee at a future meeting."

Adam Carey