Hertsmere Borough Council has apologised after a system outage, which has left residents unable to access services for help and advice.

The council says it experienced a “major system failure” on Wednesday morning (September 28) affecting online and phone systems.

Engineers are still working to fix the problem, but a temporary call centre was set up earlier this afternoon for urgent enquiries only (September 29).

The council’s executive director Peter Geraghty said: “On Wednesday 28 September at the start of the day, we experienced a major system failure of our online services, which also affected our phone systems.

“Early investigations confirmed that it was a result of a hardware fault and had affected our back-up system.

“A replacement part was identified and sourced as soon as possible, and our IT team worked late into the night to resolve the issue. An engineer is now on-site and we expect operations to be restored shortly.”

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Mr Geraghty said the impact on services has been “regrettable” but “unavoidable” and apologised to anyone affected.

He added: “We have continued to provide updates and respond to enquiries where we can, including via our social media channels. Our civic offices also remain open for face-to-face enquiries. 

“We will be conducting a review of the situation and will work to ensure the risk of another outage of this scale happening again is minimised.”

Residents are being advised not to contact the council at this time.

However, those who need to contact the council as an emergency or have an urgent enquiry can call 020 8207 2277 or email customer.services@hertsmere.gov.uk. 

This morning, the Hertsmere Labour Party posted on its social media that it had sent up its own emergency hotline, saying it was “appalled” people were struggling to access services like energy crisis heating payments “at this difficult time”.

The party added: “Your local Labour councillors have acted where the council have failed. We’ve set up a hotline for urgent matters.

“If you need assistance with a council matter that can’t wait, call the number below and your nearest Labour councillor will do their best to help.”