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13
Nov
Microsoft outage hits public services across North Yorkshire
A major outage at Microsoft has hit key public services across North Yorkshire.
The tech giant has reported a global outage on its services such as Teams, Outlook and AI software Copilot, which has hit hundreds of millions of users.
The disruption began at around 6pm on Thursday (November 12), but has gone on to affect services across Europe, Asia and the United States.
Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said the incident is not cyber security related and the company is working to fix the problem.
However, the outage has had the ripple effect of hitting public services across North Yorkshire.
In a post on its Facebook this morning, North Yorkshire Council said email issues were affecting a number of its services and people should call the council if it is an urgent enquiry.
It said:
A number of our online services are affected by the current global Microsoft issues and we are awaiting updates. If you have an urgent issue, you can call us. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Meanwhile, North Yorkshire Police said some of its online submission forms may be affected due to the outage.
North Yorkshire Police force control room.
The force added that incidents which are “time critical but not an emergency” should be reported through 101. Emergency reports can still be made by calling 999.
It said:
Due to a global Microsoft service issue, some of our systems may be affected today. Please visit our website for the latest updates, and thank you for your patience and understanding.
Non-urgent enquiries can be submitted via our website.
Our 101 and 999 systems are unaffected. In an emergency, always call 999.
However, Sir Ciaran Devane, chief executive of NHS Alliance, said critical and operational systems in the health service were working despite the outage.
He said:
The Microsoft outage is affecting some NHS services, notably access to email, but it appears that all clinical and operational systems are working effectively.
NHS leaders and their teams are working hard to minimise disruption, maintain essential services and support staff and patients who may be affected. Their priority is, as always, to ensure patient safety and continuity of care.
NHS organisations have workarounds in place when email is unavailable, so contingencies are in place to manage situations like this.
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