As most people have heard at the end of last week fire ripped through the offices of Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council at Crowmarsh Gifford. The fire was the result of arson and two other properties were targetted in the same attack. Thames Valley Police have charged a man as a result and he is due to appear in the Crown Court at the end of the month. Thankfully the Council has good contingency plans and is well insured. Staff rallied round and worked flat out from the moment the fire was reported to ensure that business could carry on as best as possible. Thanks to the shared services between Vale and South Oxfordshire we have been able to relocate a core of staff to the offices in Abingdon which has allowed us to recover most services in extremely short order. As most of our services are now back up and running it’s easier to tell you where you might experience delays or disruptions rather than listing services that, apart from things possibly taking a little longer than normal, aren’t hugely affected. But please bear in mind with all services that we’re operating from temporary offices with fewer staff than normal so there may be one of two unforeseen teething problems and if that happens please bear with us. If you have an enquiry that isn’t urgent it would be a great help if you could hold off getting in touch for a week or so. Planning
- If you had an application registered with us we’re currently predicting a fortnight’s delay in deciding it.
- If you need to apply for planning permission, it would be a great help if you could delay submitting it for a couple of weeks, so we can deal with urgent issues.
- We are extending the deadline for comments on planning applications by eight days, which was the length of time our systems was down for.
- You can now view and comment on planning applications online, just click here. It will take our planning officers a few weeks to get back up to speed with the applications, so please hold off ringing about your application until the end of next week unless it’s urgent.
- All planning applications and comments we received either by post or online on Tuesday 13 January and after were definitely lost in the fire. Please resend your application or comment.
- It’s not yet clear if we still have applications that we received on Monday 13 January, so please stand by for an update.
- If any of this will cause you a major problem, please call 01235 540546.
Waste and recycling We are currently unable to take bookings for bulky waste collections. Whilst we restore our booking system, you could take your item to one of the county council's waste recycling centres. Taxi licensing If you have a taxi license that is due for renewal, please call 01235 540534 and we’ll issue a temporary license. Elections You can still register to vote (simply click here), we just can’t confirm you registration until our systems are fully restored. Please don’t worry though, this will not stop you being able to vote in the elections in May. You can also still apply for postal and proxy votes, it will just take us a little longer than usual to process these so please bear with us.