COUNCIL bosses are refusing to ban their lonely-hearts workers from setting up dates during work.

Over the past year hundreds of visits have been made to dating sites from smart phones and tablets owned by Scottish Borders Council - during office hours. And despite the trend local authority chiefs won’t slam the singletons.

A spokesperson said: “Our internet policy states that reasonable personal use is permitted and line managers are responsible for ensuring that such use does not interfere with nor detract from an employees’ performance at work or that of colleagues in the surrounding workplace.

“This policy applies to the member of staff irrespective of the device they are using.” It has emerged that over the past year 165 views were made of the site Plenty of Fish by the desk daters.

A total of 145 views of Match.com were also logged and a further 12 at the OK Cupid site.

Although the latest date-finding app, Tinder, is already blocked from downloading onto local authority smartphones there were still 10 attempts to reach the site.

We did ask SBC deputy leader Catriona Bhatia for her opinion but she hadn’t responded by the time we went to press.

However public spending watchdog, TaxPayer Scotland, were more forthcoming.

A spokesman said: “Winter is coming and nobody wants to be lonely, but Council employees should keep their amorous adventures to their own free time.

“Taxpayers will be less than thrilled that council employees are focussing on their love lives when they should be working hard for the community.”