{"id":13232,"date":"2015-01-16T10:08:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T09:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=13232"},"modified":"2015-01-16T10:08:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T09:08:08","slug":"fire-at-district-council-offices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=13232","title":{"rendered":"Fire at District Council Offices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About 9 months ago the Vale of White Horse District Council (VWHDC) moved a lot of their staff out of Abbey House in Abingdon to offices at Crowmarsh Gifford &#8211; home of South Oxfordshire District Council, as part of a closer collaboration between the councils to save money. The space they released at Abbey House was then used by Oxfordshire County Council.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag15\/15011506.jpg\" alt=\"Blaze in District Council Offices\" \/><br \/>\nIt was a shock to see those joint offices in flames on 15th Jan 2015. Two other buildings were also set alight, and a local resident arrested for arson.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody appears to have been hurt.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag15\/15011502.jpg\" alt=\"Blaze in District Council Offices\" \/><br \/>\nMeanwhile, there were many comings and goings at Abbey House in Abingdon. An early police presence made people speculate that it too might come under attack.<\/p>\n<p>Core people were moved to &#8216;hot desks&#8217; at Abbey House. And we were told:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Services such as recycling and leisure run by external contractors would carry on as usual<\/li>\n<li>Council Tax payments could be paid as usual.<\/li>\n<li>Emergency services such as people made homeless, or dangerous structures needing inspecting, could contact the council number &#8211; the Abbey House number.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most council employees were asked to work from home until desks were available.<\/p>\n<p>Residents who wanted to contact the council, with non urgent matters, were asked to delay for a &nbsp;few days until people and systems are back in place.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag15\/15011504.jpg\" alt=\"Blaze in District Council Offices\" \/><br \/>\nThe sale by VWHDC of Old Abbey House (next door) was delayed because of a community challenge a few months ago. The delay was to give time for bids for community use to come forward. The Vale&#8217;s empty properties, like this, may get used again, bringing more Council employees back to Abingdon for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 9 months ago the Vale of White Horse District Council (VWHDC) moved a lot of their staff out of Abbey House in Abingdon to offices at Crowmarsh Gifford &#8211; home of South Oxfordshire District Council, as part of a closer collaboration between the councils to save money. The space they released at Abbey House [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}