A COMPUTER glitch that led to some west Wiltshire people being unable to pay their rent on time threw council staff into temporary panic.

Problems with a computer server at West Wiltshire District Council started on Friday and led to an IT meltdown on Monday and Tuesday.

The faulty system, known as the Academy server, deals with housing benefit and council tax benefit payments, as well as billings for council tax and business rates.

District council spokesman Louise Knox said 92 benefit payments had been delayed, but that the system failure had possibly affected a larger number of people. She said staff at the council had been working frantically to overcome the problems.

"We have had engineers from all over the country here since the weekend. They were here until 10pm on Tuesday night working incredibly hard to make sure it was sorted out.

"Ninety-four cheques should have gone out at the beginning of the week and are going out by first class post tonight (Wednesday).

"Some are paid directly to tenants and some go to landlords for more than one person, which means it could be more than 94 people affected.

"Hopefully the landlords we deal with will understand that this has been a problem and we are dealing with it.

"If a tenant has been worried that their landlord thinks they are trying to pull a fast one we are happy to reassure them."

She said fortunately the glitch had not struck on the date when the bulk of benefit payments are sent out.

But it did come when many people were making queries about their council tax payments, because bills have been sent out over the past few weeks.

Miss Knox said: "It was the busy time of the month in terms of queries so it has been busy for customer service staff."

This is the first teething problem with the Academy server, brought in last year to improve the process of benefits payments. A replacement server is being used while it is fixed.

Miss Knox said some payments would now be prioritised to deal with the backlog. "There will be every effort made to make sure there are no further problems.

"It will take a couple of days of people being patient with us while we iron out the final glitches and we ask people to bear with us."

A spokesman for West Wiltshire Housing Society said they had been informed of the problems and were able to take steps to reduce the impact.