The Metropolitan Police have announced it has cost them more than £3.5 million to police Just Stop Oil protests in the last four weeks. 

The environmental campaigners began three months of planned action on 24th May and there have been 78 marches since, including one in Ealing on 28th April, and 60 of these marches were deemed to have caused "serious disruption". 

45 arrests have been made across these marches when protestors have not brought their action to an end following the imposition of Section 12 orders. 

Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said: "I understand that many Londoners are concerned and frustrated by the deliberate disruption caused by Just Stop Oil.  

"For the past four weeks we have deployed significant numbers of officers in central London specifically to respond to these protests – so far the amount of time lost to other policing priorities and to communities across the city stands at 10,677 shifts. 

"Officers will respond as soon as we are aware of actions causing serious disruption. The time from disruption starting to officers imposing conditions and removing protestors has typically been between 13 and 19 minutes. 

"The policing of protest is not straightforward. Officers are constantly required to balance the rights of those protesting with the rights of those who are impacted by the protest.  

"We are assessing these situations in real time balancing complex human rights and legal considerations.  

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"Londoners can be assured that we are taking these issues seriously and it is clear from the number of times conditions have been imposed and arrests made, that there is no right to seriously disrupt others." 

This series of protests has been characterised by a tactic known as "slow marches", which sees protestors walk very slowly through areas to cause the maximum amount of disruption to traffic. 

A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said after the protest in Ealing: "People marching to protect their rights, lives and livelihoods is a time honoured method of resistance. We are doing what the Suffragettes did and what the Civil Rights movements did.   

"It's what everyone does when the inalienable right to life and a livelihood are violated – they engage in direct action. It is an act of self respect, an act of solidarity, an act of necessity. 

"We won't be deterred by changes to protest laws or how strongly the police enforce those laws. Just Stop Oil supporters understand that this is irrelevant when we face mass starvation, mass death and the collapse of ordered human society."