Police say a 13-week campaign by Just Stop Oil (JSO) has cost them more than £7.7 million, the equivalent of 23,500 officer shifts.
Figures given to LBC by the Metropolitan Police revealed the cost of policing 515 protests carried out by JSO since April, with action including slow marches in major roads in London and disruption of high-profile sporting events.
More than 270 people have been arrested.
We've got over 150 officers who ordinarily would be policing in local communities, who are policing in and around other parts of London— Matt Twist, Metropolitan Police
This is on top of the £7.5 million spent by the force policing protest action by JSO between October and December last year.
Speaking on LBC on Monday, Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said: “The Met is a resilient organisation, we’re a large organisation and we’re used to policing protests, but this is quite a chronic thing.
“In terms of every single day, we’ve got over 150 officers who ordinarily would be policing in local communities, who are policing in and around other parts of London.
“And one of the challenges we have with Just Stop Oil is they don’t tell us where they’re going to protest, they don’t tell us when they’re going to take this action, they don’t engage, which means that we have to put more officers on it than we otherwise would do.”
As well as marching in main roads, Just Stop Oil activists have disrupted events including The Open, Wimbledon, the Ashes, the Gallagher Premiership rugby final at Twickenham and the World Snooker Championship.
They also took action at Chelsea Flower Show and the London Pride March, disrupted filming of the Channel 4 show The Last Leg, and sprayed orange paint on the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero building in central London.
