TWO out of three north Essex councils don’t allow staff to access social networking sites from office computers, the Gazette has found.

Portsmouth City Council recently hit the headlines for banning staff from visiting the Facebook site.

It did so after discovering staff spent about 400 hours a month on Facebook.

Colchester Council spokesman Lucie Breadman said its information security settings did not allow personal access to social networking sites.

Tendring Council also blocks personal networking sites to stop staff using them at work.

Spokesman Damian Williams added: “We do allow staff a limited amount of personal internet use in their own time but that’s as far as we go.”

However, Claire Thwaites, a spokesman for Braintree Council, said its staff were still allowed to access Facebook on council computers in their own time.

She said the council’s system had an audit function which checked internet usage.