The council was forced to temporarily take down its X – formerly known as Twitter – account on Friday (January 9) after it was hacked in the early hours of the morning.
An inappropriate image was reposted to the council’s X page, which the authority believes was done by a bot rather than a person.
It is not clear exactly how long the post appeared on the account for, but the Recorder was alerted to the content shortly after 4am.
This account has been hacked – we deeply apologise for the offensive post on here. We are working to address this urgently. Please use our website to contact us for any customer enquiries. Thank you.
— Havering Council (@LBofHavering) January 9, 2026
By 7.24am, the council was aware of the hack and working to address the offensive post “urgently”.
In a tweet, Havering Council said: “This account has been hacked – we deeply apologise for the offensive post on here.
“We are working to address this urgently.
“Please use our website to contact us for any customer enquiries. Thank you.”
The inappropriate post has since been removed, and the X site is now secure, the council has confirmed.
A spokesperson for Havering Council said: “We found that our X account had been hacked and an inappropriate post was reposted on the site.
“We believe this was done by a bot rather than an individual.
“We temporarily took the account down and deleted the post.
“We have ensured it is secure and protected and will continue to monitor the site.
“Sadly, we are in a world where all public bodies are subject to such attacks by malicious individuals and groups and we remain vigilant.
“In this case we were able to act quickly.”
The spokesperson added that none of the council’s other social media accounts were affected by the hack.
