City Hall – home to the Greater London Authority – which is located on the south bank of the River Thames has been closed due to flooding.
The flooding was caused by a burst water main in St Thomas St. Officials say it has caused flooding and subsequent loss of power to City Hall as well as other buildings on the More London development.
The building has been closed to staff and visitors on Monday and it is currently unclear when it will re-open.
MayorWatch understands that the flooding is in the basement area used by London Elects, the body which is overseeing the GLA elections this Thursday.
Later this week the building is reported to be the scene of a BBC sponsored election party and on Friday is due to host the results delcaration for the GLA elections.
A spokeswoman for London Elects told MayorWatch "they were looking at contingency plans" but stressed that ballot papers were never going to stored at City Hall and would be unaffected by the the incident.
Damian Hockney who leads the One London Party on the Assembly said the news was "a bad omen for the elections" adding "not only are there concerns about the lack of democracy and almost total media blackout on any candidate outside the state-approved LibLabCon trio, but we now have a City Hall whose communications have seized up and which not be open to greet whoever is elected Mayor".
ITguru says
The london.gov.uk website has been down for hours – are the two related? Surely the web servers aren’t located on site?
Peter says
Yes IT guru, you guessed it, all the IT at City Hall in in the basement, potentially at risk of being flooded.
They have a backup site and I expect they’ve had to transfer operations there. I see london.gov.uk is now back on line.
Damian Hockney AM says
…but not our e-mail system, Peter. It still does not work. And we are not allowed into the building.