Britain’s big freeze may have brought travel chaos and delays to thousands of commuters this week, but a number of UK schools and nurseries have been utilising SMS to give parents advance notice of closures and/or changes to opening times.

Both Morpeth Newminster Middle School in Northumberland – one of the earliest and hardest-hit recipients of the harsh weather – and infant daycare provider Squirrels Day Nurseries, have relied on Txtlocal’s SMS alerts service to keep parents up to date on how the heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures have affected their facilities.

Morpeth Newminster head teacher, Paul Lawrence, hailed the service as “absolutely outstanding” and “flexible and simple to use”, revealing that he has used Txtlocal’s platform to send out more than 5,000 texts this week, while Jo Kavakeb, director and founder of Squirrels, commented: “We use Txtlocal to instantly inform parents and staff about nursery opening and closure times during this period of adverse weather conditions. Parents have told us they think the system is brilliant – we’d definitely recommend using Txtlocal for emergency messaging purposes and for quick and efficient news sharing.”

Speaking to Mobile Marketing, Darren Daws, Txtlocal managing director, adds: “Organisations like schools can encourage parents to opt-in to a short code to receive updates for events, but also for updates in circumstances, such as the extreme weather conditions we are experiencing now.

“If the weather has affected organisations being able to function properly, there is no instant communication substitute that can reach people on a global scale in a matter of minutes, and business can rectify, or certainly reduce the damage by reaching out to people when things like this occur.”