County council to investigate £500k payments made to social media freelancer

Essex County Council's Audit, Governance and Standards Committee will scrutinise a series of controversial contracts totalling £500,000 awarded to a freelance marketer to run a social media campaign.

The committee will consider decisions that saw the local authority pay the freelancer Simon Harris £493,000 to provide social media posts from June 2020 until April 2023.

Harris is known for running a blog called 'Man Behaving Badly' and has followings on TikTok and Instagram under the handle 'Man Behaving Dadly'.

He ran a social media campaign on the council's behalf to spread public health information during the Covid-19 pandemic. The work mainly involved running a Facebook page.

Questions over the payments were raised last month (January 2024) after news coverage of council accounts detailed the payments to Harris.

The committee's investigation will examine the selection process used to award Harris the contracts, who made the decision and what background checks were made.

It will also consider "what precisely" the contracts were awarded for, who signed them off, what due diligence was carried out and what value for money was carried out before further contracts or payments were awarded.

Additionally, the committee will look at whether declarations of interest were correctly recorded by those directly authorising the payments.

At a full council meeting in which he recommended the council approve the investigation, Cllr Kevin Bentley, leader of the council, said the social media campaign that Harris was involved in was "critical" to tackling misinformation and delivering public health messages during the pandemic.

He said: "The idea was to communicate via local Facebook groups and persuade local group administrators to share messages around safety and virus transmission.

"It was a novel approach, but it was effective. There was substantial content creation and incredible engagement. It was also lauded nationally as well."

Cllr Bentley added: "Where the council has since found that things were not done by the correct procedure, officers have not hid it and I have ensured the information has been published.”

He said: "The council has been open that procurement waivers weren't granted for most of the spend, that some of the contracts were not signed and that processes weren't always followed around declarations of interest.

"Some money was paid to an individual to pass on to others. This was not good practice either, although it was not illegal.

"It would not have been allowed to happen in this way if our central services had been aware of it, which at the time they were not."

Cllr Bentley also noted that record keeping by those involved in the decision-making "was in many cases poor", meaning that the council does not have information on why some of the decisions were taken.

"All this is extremely regrettable and wrong," Cllr Bentley said.

Cllr Bentley said the committee will be tasked with seeing what more we can learn and will make sure that any earning will be implemented.

Cllr Bently has also asked the committee to look at the role of members involved in the scrutiny at the time to ascertain what they knew and what they had or had not agreed.

He has requested the Chief Executive lead the work with the committee to investigate the role of officers at the time and to recommend any changes that might be made as a result.

Simon Harris has been approached for comment.

Adam Carey