Update - Brackley area official computers down since Friday; council says some trouble may continue
Brackley’s local authority says a major computer outage is being repaired but self-serve functions may continue to be affected
West Northants Council’s (WNC) IT systems went down on Saturday and residents found they could not use library computers or access the council’s web services. The authority assured the district that it was not a cyber attack.
WNC released a statement this lunchtime (Monday) saying the fault was with the National Grid.
Martin Henry, Deputy Chief Executive and Resources Executive Director at West Northamptonshire Council said: “Two major power failures on the National Grid over the weekend near our One Angel Square offices in Northampton town centre caused our IT systems to go down. Services were restored into Saturday evening and then a second outage set all the services back again on Sunday morning until the National Grid fault was located and repaired. We have been working hard around the clock to restore them as soon as possible.
“All critical services are continuing to operate and residents can continue to contact us via phone, email and website however some self-service functions may not currently be available and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
“Business applications and software used by our staff are gradually being restored throughout the day and we anticipate this will be completed by tomorrow.”
One Brackley resident contacted the newsdesk to say he had tried to use the Brackley Library computers and been unable to.
"There seems to be a big outage on the council systems across the whole of West Northamptonshire since Saturday,” he said.
"We went to Brackley library to use the computer and they’re all down. I tried to query my council tax at West Northants but couldn’t log on.”
The council’s website sais: “Some online systems may be unavailable this morning following a power outage. We apologise for the inconvenience and are working hard to restore them as soon as possible. We will remove this message when the issues have been fully resolved.”
Enquiries to National Grid showed that there was a low-voltage fault close to One Angel Square on July 4.