THE COUNCIL has released a statement explaining why their services were disrupted yesterday.

The council has now come forward with a statement saying the outages on Thursday, November 21 were due to a water leak, which affected their IT servers.

A spokesperson for the council said: "‘We are sorry if anyone had to wait a little longer to speak to us yesterday but unfortunately a water leak affected our IT Servers."

Read more: Winchester City Council services unexpectedly shut

Winchester City Council's offices (Image: Cameron Braddick) The council continued: "The majority of our online services are back up and running today. Contacting us online is the easiest way to reach us, or alternatively by phone or email from 08.30 am.

"Reception is open as usual between 10am and 3pm for anyone who needs to visit in person. Phone call wait times may be longer than usual and so we thank everyone for their patience while we deal with this issue."

Citizens in need of Winchester City Council's services allegedly found the council offices shut, as well as social media posts stating their servers were down.

Read more: Winchester City Council to buy 146 new homes at Kings Barton

A post on Facebook said: "We're sorry to say that due to a server issue, some of our internet services, such as My Winchester Tenancy, are currently unavailable. We're working hard to fix this. 

"Additionally our call wait times may be longer than usual, please bear with us while we resolve the issue."

Concerned residents told the Chronicle that they could not get in contact with the council at all, despite the assurances.

The Chronicle tested the alternative email put out and received a response within 10 minutes of sending it.

Winchester City Councill asserts its offices were not shut before the usual closing time of 3pm yesterday.