KENT County Council has become the latest employer to ban staff from accessing Facebook amid concerns that too much office time is being spent on the social networking internet site.

The county council said it had acted to prevent staff from accessing Facebook via the authority's computer network "to avoid the temptation of anyone going on it during working hours".

KCC has also prevented its 32,000 staff from accessing You Tube, the shared video internet site.

The council's decision follows in the footsteps of several other large employers who have recently acted to prevent their staff using Facebook, including the Metropolitan Police and Transport for London and several private-sector companies.

However, the move has not gone down well with some members of a Kent County Council group that had been established on the website.

Some members have criticised the decision although one contribution suggests KCC's concerns may be valid. The contributor says that she is "personally gutted" that she now has to do some work as a result of the ban.

An increasing number of employers are banning access to the site, with an estimated seventy per cent of UK employers now preventing staff from using it.

Others have warned that using the site during office hours is a sackable offence.

A recent survey suggested that users in this country spend an average three hours 11 minutes on the site each month.