Central Bedfordshire Offline

Posted on February 17, 2010

Update 11.25am: Central Bedfordshire Council has invoked its business continuity plan to ensure it continues providing services to local people following a major IT problem which occurred overnight on Monday, 15 February 2010.

This does mean the council will be operating a restricted service over the phone until early next week and that its website is currently unavailable. Central Bedfordshire Council has an established business continuity plan which has been put into action to restore its IT services, minimise risk to the public and ensure services continue to be delivered.

Overnight Monday the council's IT system experienced a problem which has affected many of its routine applications. We have been working on the issue since then, and will continue to rebuild systems over the coming days.

Local people are being advised not to contact the council by email at all as these cannot currently be opened and only by phone in an emergency until early next week.

Cllr Maurice Jones

Cllr Maurice Jones, Corporate Resources Portfolio Holder, said: “Even though our IT systems are based on nationally recognised best practice, problems can still occur. This is a one in a million problem. This has reduced our ability to service calls through our customer contact centre, stopped us receiving emails and means our website is unavailable. Can I assure people that we are working all hours to get the systems restored and we have a well crafted business continuity plan in place to continue services and protect vulnerable people in these situations.

“It will help us if people could only call us in an emergency until early next week and please note we will not be able to respond to emails at this time.

“We will keep people informed through the local media about developments.”

Update 2.00pm: Central Bedfordshire Council is still experiencing major IT problems so has invoked its business continuity plan to ensure it continues providing services to local people.

As part of this, www.centralbedfordshire.wordpress.com has been created so residents and partners can see key information updates, important emergency numbers and useful websites.

This facility also enables you to sign up to email alerts so you can be notified when new updates have been added on.

We are still advising people not to contact the council by email at all at the moment as these cannot currently be opened and only by phone, on 0300 300 8000, in an emergency until early next week.

Source: Central Bedfordshire News Release, 17th February 2010