Figures provided by the Dunedin City Council on staff use of internet sites do not reflect actual visits to the sites, a council spokeswoman said today.
The ODT was provided figures by the council yesterday in response to a request about which internet sites staff visited most frequently.
It has emerged the figures - which showed Trade Me as visited 535,647 times by council employees last month - overstated visits to the online auction site and to other sites.
Actual visits are likely to be considerably lower, the spokeswoman said.
Council staff are working on revised figures and the ODT hopes to be in a position to publish those tomorrow.
Internet use by council staff is in the spotlight after Family First New Zealand complained about the council blocking a subsidiary site of the lobby group that had a petition against a proposed law legalising gay marriage.
The group was notified of the block by a council staff member who attempted to access the site during work time.
Asked if that staff member faced any disciplinary action, Mr Miller said the council did not conduct employment matters "via the media".
The site was blocked by the council's automated web content manager, which identified it as a "hate" site.
Yesterday, council communications and marketing manager Graham McKerracher said the council could review blocked sites and had unblocked sites four times, but only where the sites were work-related.
It was not going to unblock the Protect Marriage site because it was not work-related.
"Why would we do that? It's not relevant."
Family First director Bob McCoskrie said all he was concerned about was consistency of what got blocked.
"It just seems quite a targeted block."
* This article was revised at 12.10pm. Comments submitted before this time refer to the previous version of the article.
