COUNCIL workers whose offices were badly damaged in an arson attack started moving into their new home yesterday.

A small number of South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils’ shared staff settled into their new office at Milton Park, near Didcot.

The office at 135 Milton Park will become a temporary home for up to four years while the councils decide whether they can salvage their old base in Crowmarsh Gifford, near Wallingford.

The new home is still being built so only a few staff were moved in yesterday, but more will move in over the coming weeks.

The office will be open to the public from the end of June, the council has said. The authorities’ shared offices in Crowmarsh were virtually destroyed by a blaze in the early hours of January 15.

About 150 firefighters in 27 engines battled the blaze, which also spread to a neighbouring funeral parlour, and a related fire at a nearby thatched cottage.

Andrew Main, 47, from Braze Lane, near Rokemarsh, has pleaded guilty to four counts of arson with intent to endanger life and not guilty to a fifth.

Following the arson attack, some of the 400 council staff have been working at Abbey House in Abingdon while others have been working from home.

South Oxfordshire leader John Cotton told the Oxford Mail earlier this week that the council’s £10m burned-out headquarters could be renovated rather than demolished.

But the final decision awaits a report by council’s officers on the viability of such a scheme.