Fire causes disruption to council services
A fire at an electricity substation caused a power cut and disruption to Northampton Borough Council services.
The blaze yesterday morning, at Cliftonville House, the council's headquarters in Bedford Road, cut electricity supply to the building, meaning phone lines could not be used and computers were unusable.
Hundreds of local authority employees had to work from home and tax payers wanting to use a huge range of services found the usual phone numbers out of order, although essential services such as Call Care for the elderly were still available as usual.
The fire service said the blaze had broken out in a boiler room of the substation, which stands near the council building, at about 7am and two crews were sent out to deal with it.
A spokeswoman for Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service said: "It was a small fire which was out on arrival but in a substation like that even a small one can cause big problems."
It is believed the fire was caused by a fault rather than by human action.
Electricity company Central Networks took over from firefighters and were trying get power back to the building in time for today.
In the meantime, anyone wanting to contact the council was being asked by local authority bosses to call Northampton 837999 instead of the usual switchboard number, where service was "patchy".
Cliftonville House itself was completely closed to visitors and even those with urgent planning or environmental health questions were asked to call.
David Kennedy, pictured, chief executive of the council, said yesterday: "We are doing everything we can to get our systems running but we have put our contingency plans into action to ensure there is as little disruption as possible. I am asking people to bear with us, our telephone system is already very busy and could be a little slow. We are working hard to make sure that Cliftonville House will be open for business again on Wednesday and are doing all we can to keep our critical services running."
Around 850 homes were also affected by the power cut.
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Weather for Northampton
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: -1 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 6 mph
Wind direction: South
