Service update from South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse
The day-to-day planning operations of South Oxfordshire DC and Vale of White Horse DC are still being affected by last week’s devastating office fire.
The two planning authorities (who shared the same office) asked us to communicate the following update to applicants:
LATEST UPDATE: Monday 19 January
Our website is now live again following the major fire at our main offices in Crowmarsh last week.
However, some parts of our website work on systems that we are still restoring and might not work as normal, for example online application forms and reporting. Also, as our phone service isn’t completely restored, some phone numbers may not work.
In the next day or two we hope to be able to provide you with a more detailed update on what services we have available through our website.
It will probably take a week before we can restore our IT systems, so we’re kindly asking residents to please only get in touch if they have a genuine emergency. If you do have an emergency, please call 01235 520202.
Planning is the main area of our website affected by the fire and we are asking residents not to submit any planning applications until further notice. Our planning application register is currently not available so you are unable to view or comment on existing applications on our website. We will provide an update early next week.
Our thoughts are with those planning colleagues affected by the fire.
I wonder how many other LAs are similarly ill prepared for disaster. I would have expected at the very least, off site servers shadowing onsite severs. A sign of austere times I guess.