TEST Valley Borough Council's computer system has fallen victim to a computer 'virus' which knocked out its printers and has seriously delayed some of the work of the council.

The council, which is well advanced towards its goal of enabling all its activities to be carried out electronically as part of the e-government initiative, said that its services were 'seriously affected'.

To try to minimise disruption to customers staff at Beech Hurst have been working hard to find alternative means of providing the necessary documents and cheques.

However, following a week of interruption, senior officials have warned that further delays are unavoidable as staff catch up with the backlog of work.

The leader of the council, Cllr Ian Carr, said: "The council's priority is to minimise the disruption to residents and customers caused by this virus.

"We are following the best advice available to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and staff will do their best to address the concerns of anyone who might suffer unusual difficulty as a result of the delays that have inevitably resulted.

"We will do our best to keep everyone informed about when we will be able to resume our usual standards of service, and ask for continued patience on the part of the public in what we recognise to be a very difficult circumstances."

Two viruses have been particularly troublesome so far this autumn - 'bugbear' and 'KLEZ-H' - both of which are spread via e-mails which fool recipients of a suspect e-mail into opening them and then send out messages to all those in the user's contact section.