Dear readers,

You may have noticed that this afternoon (Wednesday) the story count in This Is Essex's Local News and Local Sport sections is lower than usual. You may have also spotted that fewer articles have pictures with them.

This shortfall is due to the failure of one of our computers, which unfortunately has broken down irreparably.

We're sorry if this has caused anyone inconvenience, and we hope to be back to a full normal service in the next day or so.

In the meantime, all the stories you find within these sections are right up-to-date, and as ever, any stories which have already been published on the site can be retrieved from our Archives section.

Thanks for your understanding and happy reading!

Yours faithfully,

Simon Leek, web editor

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.