Time to Divest: Join the march of the GIANT LETTERS to County Hall on 6 Feb!

UPDATE: County Council wasted over £49k on “absurd” security at County Hall

Press release
Divest East Sussex [1]
Tuesday 30 January 2024

PHOTO: https://tinyurl.com/climatetugofwar [CAPTION: ESCC spent over £5k ‘protecting’ County Hall from this street theatre performance on 6 Dec ‘22. Photo: Steve Lewis];
https://tinyurl.com/divestfrontpages%5BCAPTION: ESCC spent over £6k ‘protecting’ County Hall from these giant newspaper headlines on 19 Sept ‘23. Photo: Steve Lewis];
http://tinyurl.com/esccabsurdsecurity [CAPTION: ESCC spent over £1,680 ‘protecting’ County Hall from this protest about the ‘absurd’ security at County Hall, on 12 Dec ‘23. Photo: Divest East Sussex]

COUNTY COUNCIL WASTED OVER £49K ON “ABSURD” SECURITY AT COUNTY HALL, NEW FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUESTS REVEAL
£19.5k spent ‘protecting’ Hall from petition hand-in, street theatre, giant newspaper headlines and mince pies

Tuesday 30 January 2024: East Sussex County Council (ESCC) spent over £49.7k hiring scores of unnecessary “security personnel” at County Hall on nine dates during the fourteen-month period between 8 Oct ‘22 and 6 Dec ‘23, new Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests have revealed [2].

An earlier request had revealed that ESCC had spent over £30k on five of these dates, ‘protecting’ the Hall from email questions, a petition hand-in and a tiny vigil of peaceful fasters [3]. Now two additional requests have revealed a further £19.5k of expenditure on four more dates [4].