West Berkshire Council services will be disrupted this weekend as essential maintenance takes place at the council's Market Street office.
The weekend will see power to the building shut down while mandatory electrical testing is completed and this will affect key IT systems.
Although plans are in place to minimise the disruption some inconvenience to local communities is inevitable.
The disruption will mean that it won't be possible to phone or email the council or access the website. In particular:
Speaking about the work, Maintenance and Property Delivery Manager Andy Green said: "We're required by law to test our electric wiring every five years. To do this safely we need to turn off power to the building and a consequence is that we'll be left without some of the systems we use to provide our services to local communities.
"Unfortunately there is no alternative so we're asking our residents to be patient and plan to contact us, if they need to, either side of the weekend. We're working to keep the disruption to a minimum and plan to resume normal service on Monday morning.
"We're also putting plans in place to make sure that those services that run over the weekend can continue to run as far as possible - and particularly where we have significant responsibilities such as our safeguarding and housing services."
If you need to pay a bill, request a service or information or get in touch with someone at the council please make arrangements to do so either side of the weekend.
There will be an Emergency Duty Team available to deal with out-of-hours social services and homelessness emergencies. The team can be reached by:
· Phone: 01344 786543
· Text: 07867 907877
· Email: edt@bracknell-forest.gov.uk
The weekend will see power to the building shut down while mandatory electrical testing is completed and this will affect key IT systems.
Although plans are in place to minimise the disruption some inconvenience to local communities is inevitable.
The disruption will mean that it won't be possible to phone or email the council or access the website. In particular:
- Libraries usually open on Saturdays will be closed
- The Visitor Information Centre in Newbury will be closing early at 1pm and will only be able to take cash payments
- Shaw House will be open for weddings and registrar services as usual but will only be able to accept cash at the gift shop
- The West Berkshire Council website will be unavailable with only a page providing emergency out-of-hours contacts details and links to those council services hosted externally.
Speaking about the work, Maintenance and Property Delivery Manager Andy Green said: "We're required by law to test our electric wiring every five years. To do this safely we need to turn off power to the building and a consequence is that we'll be left without some of the systems we use to provide our services to local communities.
"Unfortunately there is no alternative so we're asking our residents to be patient and plan to contact us, if they need to, either side of the weekend. We're working to keep the disruption to a minimum and plan to resume normal service on Monday morning.
"We're also putting plans in place to make sure that those services that run over the weekend can continue to run as far as possible - and particularly where we have significant responsibilities such as our safeguarding and housing services."
If you need to pay a bill, request a service or information or get in touch with someone at the council please make arrangements to do so either side of the weekend.
There will be an Emergency Duty Team available to deal with out-of-hours social services and homelessness emergencies. The team can be reached by:
· Phone: 01344 786543
· Text: 07867 907877
· Email: edt@bracknell-forest.gov.uk
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