PHONE lines at Gloucestershire County Council will be shut down for essential maintenance this weekend.

Work will take place between Saturday and Sunday to maintain a robust and resilient phone network for the council and its customers.

On Saturday there will be disruption to Gloucester telephone numbers starting with 42 (such as 01452 425000 – 01452 427999) and on Sunday there will be disruption to Cheltenham telephone numbers starting with 53 (such as 01242 532300 – 532699).

To minimise inconvenience for customers, work is being completed outside office hours and all services will be back to normal by Monday.

Out-of-hours council numbers will not affected by the update, however callers will not hear the usual recorded messages directing them to these numbers if they call this weekend.

Telephone numbers not affected by the work are: • All numbers starting with 32 and 58 • All emergency out of hours numbers: • Adult or children and families services emergency duty teams on 01452 614194 • Gloucestershire highways out-of-hours emergency telephone: 08000 514514.

Andrew McCartney, Director of Programme Support said: “It is important to update our systems to ensure they continue to run smoothly for people in Gloucestershire.

"It’s been about three years since our systems last had a major upgrade like this and the work is essential to ensure our customers can get hold of us.

"We hope to keep disruption to a minimum and our out-of-hours numbers will still work. ”

Emergency calls should go straight to emergency services on 999 as ever. For more information visit gloucestershire.gov.uk.