BUSINESSES in Warrington are being pro-active about the Millennium bug and are taking it very seriously, but vigilance is still needed, according to Sam Bell, personal business advisor with Business Link, Warrington.

The town has taken up its maximum allowance of free "Bug Buster" training courses funded by the government, with a total of 250 companies gearing themselves up through this method.

Other companies are using private consultants.

Said Sam : "Business Link will advise anybody who comes to us. A lot of people are of the opinion that only computers will be affected."

He said the bug could also potentially affect infrastructure. "We don't know where the bug will strike. There are millions of opportunites where date sensitive chips could be affected.... central heating, video, TV, anything with a date capacity.

"It is important to identify any critical areas, anything that will stop cash flow or affect it, such as machinery stopping."

He said that banks were making Millennium compliance a lending criteria, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants was making Millennium compliance an audit issue.

The Borough Council recently had a visit from the Home Office Emergency Planning Division to discuss the council's progress with Millennium related issues. The conclusion of the visit was that the Division was "impressed with the importance attached to the Millennium and the way that planning for it is being progressed, particularly the high profile given to emergency planning."

The Audit Commission, in its second report on arrangements for the Millennium bug, concluded that "Warrington have made excellent progress on year 2000 issues when compared to other unitary and metropolitan councils."

Action 2000, which is co-ordinating Millennium compliance across the country, reports that most sectors and processes that make up the national infrastructure are confident that they will have no material disruption as a result of the bug.

However, Action 2000 chairman Don Cruickshank said that there were still too many critical sectors where identified risk remained, and there was a lot of work to be done to keep the infrastructure on track.

Business Link, Warrington, provides a Critical Issues Audit, available to any company. The audit identifies areas that will need attention in terms of Millennium compliance. It is available at £495, a 50 per cent reduction on the normal price, through a deal between Business Link and the National Computing Centre.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.