Tewkesbury Council Addressing Work Backlog Following System Shutdown

A local authority that deactivated its systems due to a suspected cyber attack is currently focused on reducing the accumulated workload resulting from the event. Tewkesbury Borough Council initiated a shutdown of its IT infrastructure on September 4, after the discovery of what were believed to be unauthorized user accounts within its internal networks. At that time, the council declared a major incident, operating under the assumption that it was experiencing a cyber attack. Nevertheless, a source had previously informed the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the situation was, in fact, the council’s “own systems testing its own security”. The council proceeded to suspend all online services and subsequently reassigned personnel to various towns throughout the area to guarantee that the most vulnerable residents could still access essential services. Since then, the council has received clearance, confirming that no data was compromised during the incident. Despite this, the authority is currently engaged in efforts to address the accumulated work backlog. A total of 152 new planning applications have contributed to the backlog that the council had already accumulated prior to September 4. By October 29, projections indicated that the backlog was expected to increase from 238 to 390 items due to the interruption in services. Alistair Cunningham, Chief Executive of Tewkesbury Borough Council, stated: “It was difficult for teams to progress their normal work.” He added: “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.”