The 480 hours that Haringey Council’s website was down from 11th December 2005 has demonstrated a worrying lack of contingency planning according to the Lib Dem opposition.

The figure came in a response to a question tabled by Cllr Jonathan Bloch (Muswell Hill) at Monday night’s Full Council (6th February).

The cause of the website failure had been the oil explosions at the Hemel Hempstead depot, where the Council’s web hoster was based. However, Cllr Bloch is concerned that Haringey’s lack of foresight in its contingency plans meant that the three standby servers were also situated on the same premises.In addition, since the site went back online last month, it has been plagued with problems which have made access to the site impossible at times.

He says that the lack of planning in this case is alarming, but what concerns him more is the possibility of similar short-comings in more important front line services.

Cllr Bloch said:

“It is good business practice to ensure that back-up servers are situated at a different location to your main server and not on the same electricity grid. It is worrying that this widely known safeguard has been overlooked.

“What the Council needs to be doing is making sure that in light of this oversight, they are reviewing all their current contingency plans.”