West Sussex County Council to spend more than £1million on the restoration of 3,000 boxes of documents which were damaged when Storm Ciarán battered Bognor Regis

The council’s offices at Durban House, were flooded during the October storm, damaging thousands of files from areas such as children’s services, adult social care, highways, planning and fire & rescue.

On Tuesday (January 2), Duncan Crow, cabinet member for community support, fire & rescue, approved the award of a contract worth £1,005,625.50 plus VAT to Harwell Document Restoration Services.

The cost will form part of a wider insurance claim for the building.

A spokesman said: “The flood caused by Storm Ciarán has had a severe impact on the records and the service operations.

“All of the records on the lowest shelves were damaged and the mobile racking was compromised.

“Records Management Service staff activated their emergency plan to rescue as many boxes as possible and called in Harwell Restoration under our Priority User agreement.”

While Harwell already had a contract with the council to ‘react to emergencies’, the value was not high enough to do what was needed following the flood.

Some 792 boxes were sent to the specialists during October and November for freeze-drying, decontamination, cleaning and restoration.

After waiting for the flood water to abate and for the mobile racking to be assessed and declared safe to use, another 2,000 boxes followed in December.