IT could take months for South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils to recover from yesterday’s fire, leaders said yesterday.

An IT system shared by the two authorities was knocked out and all but urgent services were cut.

Benefit payments, council tax, planning and waste collection for some 256,000 people are all co-ordinated from the ruined council office in Crowmarsh Gifford.

Department team leaders from both councils headed to the Vale offices at Abbey House, Abingdon, yesterday to invoke the councils’ disaster recovery plan.

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The Vale’s elected leader Matt Barber said: “Whether we rebuild the SODC office or demolish and rebuild, it will take a significant amount of time. From what I understand, Crowmarsh is pretty much destroyed – it sounds horrific.”

Vale acting chief executive Steve Bishop said it would be “weeks or months before we know the full cost of the damage” from the fire.

He said he understood the office, worth about £10m, was gutted but hoped the repair cost would be covered by the council’s insurance. The two councils’ shared IT system, based at Crowmarsh, was “mostly knocked out”, he said, and both websites were down yesterday.

But Mr Bishop and Mr Barber said they hoped little if any data would be lost, as the councils make regular off-site back-ups. New computers and servers were delivered to Abbey House yesterday so the councils could begin getting services back online.

About 380 people who work at the Crowmarsh office were yesterday morning told to stay at home.

Priority services such as homelessness prevention and benefits were still being offered from Abingdon yesterday and Mr Bishop said he hoped the public would not notice much difference in which services they could access.

He said: “If people have an emergency, it will be business as usual, but we would ask customers to bear with us at the moment. There aren’t many council services which people absolutely can’t be without for 24 hours.

“Council tax collection is not absolutely urgent, for example, but we are taking this seriously and we want to bring services back as soon as possible. No one will be left in dire straits because of this.”

Security was stepped up at the Vale’s council offices in Abingdon amid fears the fire at Crowmarsh was deliberate.

Two police officers were stationed at Abbey House, HQ of Vale of White Horse District Council, which runs a joint authority with South Oxfordshire.

Mr Bishop said he was ensuring all employees displayed name badges and non-essential staff were sent home.

Mr Bishop, standing in for chief executive David Buckle who is on holiday, said: “That was a police decision because they said there could be heightened risks.”

South Oxfordshire District Council employs security firm R & R to patrol its Crowmarsh office several times a night and has CCTV there.

Spokesman Gavin Walton said the firm made two patrols around the outside of the building at random times each night after 7pm, but he told the Oxford Mail he was not able to say what time the last patrol was made before the fire.

SODC leader John Cotton said: “I would like to thank Oxfordshire Fire Service. Their fast actions have saved a large part of the building and we are very grateful for that.

“Our main focus right now is ensuring the main services we provide are brought back up to speed as quickly as possible and we will be doing that over the coming days and weeks.”

He added: “It’s incredibly shocking – the building does look in a bad way.

“About 400 people work here and they all need somewhere to go.

“A lot of stuff is stored on computers but it’s not a paperless office and undoubtedly some paperwork will have been destroyed.

“It’s not for me to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the building needed to be knocked down and we start again.”


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