By Andrew Topping, Local Democracy Reporter
Significant disruption is expected at Nottinghamshire County Council following a fire at its County Hall headquarters that spread across four floors.
IT systems were reported as down on Thursday evening (July 28) after flames tore through the historic building earlier that day, with Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service sending 12 pumps to deal with the blaze.
The fire was extinguished by 6pm after the blaze was initially found inside the corridor of the ruling Conservative group just after 11.30am, leading to all staff being evacuated from the building and a major emergency services operation.
A notice issued to staff urged them not to attend County Hall on Friday (July 29).
In the staff notice, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the council said: “Due to the … fire emergency at County Hall, we will be experiencing a loss of power.
“The West Bridgford campus will be affected by this. Staff should not work from either County Hall or Trent Bridge House and are advised to work from home or alternative NCC sites for at least … tomorrow (Friday, July 29).
“There will be a loss of some services including Skype, Rostrvm, Capita One and GIS. We are working with our suppliers and partners to ensure normal services can be resumed as soon as possible.”
The authority has also alerted the public that its customer services have been impacted by the incident, with phone lines remaining down on Friday morning as a result of the IT issues.
An automated message when calling the council’s customer services number says: “We have an ongoing emergency that has resulted in us being unable to take calls at this present time.
“If you need urgent help, go to our website and use our ‘contact us’ forms.
“If your call requires urgent assistance from the emergency services, please call 999.”
Speaking to the media in the aftermath of the fire, council leader Ben Bradley (Con) added there is expected to be disruption to the way his councillors conduct their business after the blaze started in their corridor.
He said: “It doesn’t look good at all for that portion of the building, certainly, it looks like we’re not going to get back into our corridor where we work as a political administration for quite some time.
“It’s our offices as councillors that seemingly have felt the brunt of it, so we’re waiting to find out what’s happened and why and to what extent that damage is – whether it’s spread along the corridor.
“We’re going to have to look for some alternative accommodation, I think it’s very unlikely we’re going to be allowed back into that part of the building any time soon.
“We’ll figure that out over the coming days to make sure we’ve got that continuity for our part of the job as well.”
He added: “The key thing now whilst we await that assessment is that everybody is safe.
“We’re looking at alternative working arrangements to make sure services can continue uninterrupted, which so far is all okay, so big thanks to the fire service.”
Matt Reavill, group manager at Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, explained how his crew managed to tackle the blaze.
He said: “We believe the fire started on the first floor and spread along the first floor, the second, third and fourth floors.
“Due to it being an old building, it helped its travel between floors.”
