'Cyber attack' council working to ease backlog

What was thought to be a cyber attack turned out to be an accident

A council which turned off its systems when it thought it had been hit by a cyber attack is working to catch up on the backlog of work caused by the incident.

Tewkesbury Borough Council shut down its IT systems on 4 September when what was thought to be unknown user accounts were found on its internal systems.

The council declared a major incident at the time, believing it was the subject of a cyber attack.

However, a source previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it had been the council's "own systems testing its own security".

Most vulnerable

The council shut down all services provided online and then redeployed staff to towns across the area to ensure the most vulnerable had access to services.

The council has since been given the all clear and no data was lost during the incident.

However, the authority is now working to catch up on the backlog of work created.

As many as 152 new planning applications have been added to the backlog the council already had before 4 September.

As of 29 October, it was estimated that the backlog would rise from 238 to 390 as a result of the service's downtime.

Tewkesbury Borough Council Chief Executive Alistair Cunningham said: "It was difficult for teams to progress their normal work.

"This inevitably resulted in some backlogs - for example in our planning service - but our officers are making excellent progress to ensure this is worked through as quickly as possible."