Scarcely a week seems to go by without an incident involving one of the Metropolitan Police’s social media accounts. Recent controversies on Twitter/X including ruling on whether the term ‘jihad’ constitutes hate speech, getting fact-checked by community notes and making demands for further powers in a post explaining their inability to prosecute those who clamber over statues.

So Mr S thought he’d do some digging into how much the Met’s online army is now costing the hard-pressed London taxpayer. As is the want of bureaucracies everywhere, the force recently undertook a reorganisation under which its ‘Social Media Team’ was subsumed into ‘a broader Digital Media Communication Team, in an expanded directorate.’ This – the Met is keen to stress – now includes such work as:

The provision of all digital media engagement, online events and staff engagement, corporate videography, photography, graphic design, content creation, data and analysis reporting to support internal, external and stakeholder communications.

Unsurprisingly therefore, spending on the old ‘Social Media Team’ has doubled from less than £230,000 for the 2020/21 financial year to now more than £485,000 for 2022/23 financial year under the expanded ‘Digital Media Communication Team’. Figures obtained under a Freedom of Information Request show that the 2023/24 spend is currently running at £418,000 up until October – suggesting a final figure of more than £800,000 as of April next year.

The number of staff has meanwhile doubled from six in April 2021 to twelve currently employed on its books as of November 2021. Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers’ Alliance told Mr S that ‘The Met is spending too much time and money on protecting itself rather than the public. Police chiefs should cut the size of their absurdly large communications team.’

There might be problems with 999 but at least online you might get a reply…