The Metropolitan Police have spent £7.7m policing 13 weeks of Simply Cease Oil protests, the pressure has mentioned.

Protestors mounted 515 protests since April and the price of dealing with the disruption amounted to the equal of 23,500 officer shifts.

Actions included sluggish marches in busy London roads and disrupting main sporting occasions, and greater than 270 individuals have been arrested.

It comes on high of the £7.5m officers spent policing Simply Cease Oil (JSO) demonstrations between October and December final yr.

Assistant commissioner Matt Twist informed LBC the pressure was “resilient” however coping with a “continual” challenge.

He mentioned: “By way of each single day, we’ve acquired over 150 officers who ordinarily can be policing in native communities, who’re policing in and round different components of London.

“And one of many challenges we now have with Simply Cease Oil is that they don’t inform us the place they’re going to protest, they don’t inform us after they’re going to take this motion, they don’t interact, which signifies that we now have to place extra officers on it than we in any other case would do.”

Activists have disrupted occasions together with The Open, Wimbledon, the Ashes, the Gallagher Premiership rugby closing at Twickenham and the World Snooker Championship.

Chelsea Flower Present and the London Pleasure March additionally noticed motion taken, whereas protestors disrupted filming of the Channel 4 present The Final Leg, and sprayed orange paint on the Division of Vitality Safety and Web Zero constructing in central London.

A spokesperson for the mayor of London mentioned: “The mayor helps the democratic proper to protest, nevertheless, Sadiq has at all times been clear that protests should be carried out safely and lawfully and mustn’t put Londoners or the capital’s restoration in danger.

“The intense climate occasions London has skilled lately present how rather more must be performed to deal with the local weather emergency, however protestors ought to think about whether or not their strategies danger turning public opinion in opposition to a vitally necessary trigger.

“The mayor helps the Met’s efforts to maintain Londoners secure and preserve our metropolis transferring.”