Birmingham City Council says cyber attack 'not to blame' amid IT disruption

The acting chief executive of Birmingham City Council has confirmed a cyber attack is not to blame for the recent disruption to its IT services. The crisis-hit council was recently told by government-appointed commissioners that it should be identifying future savings with increased pace and focus.

However, the local authority’s IT services were today disrupted by an issue - prompting the council to also post a warning on social media. The City Council warned: “We are experiencing intermittent problems with some of our online services.

“We are working to resolve them as quickly as possible, we apologise for any inconvenience". Speaking at a cabinet meeting, which was delayed for 30 minutes due to wifi problems, acting chief executive Graeme Betts reassured councillors that a cyber attack was not behind the technical issues the council had experienced on Tuesday morning, June 25.

READ MORE: Birmingham City Council says cyber attack ‘not to blame’ amid IT disruption

“The council is currently experiencing disruption to its IT services,” he said. “This is due to some changes made last week but in particular affect internet access and some email users.

“Internal teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we expect normal service to resume later today". He continued: “I’ve been asked the question and I can confirm this is not a cyber attack - it is down to the work we did last week.

“We know what’s caused the problem, we know what the issue is and we’re resolving it. We will get this rectified as quickly as possible.”

Commissioners, sent in by the government to oversee the council’s recovery, recently said the path to financial stability is “very tight” and added there is “no room for missteps and delay”. “There is scope to transform services and make significant efficiencies but only if work is undertaken now,” they said.

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The council was forced to make an array of budget cuts earlier this year due to Birmingham-specific issues, such as an equal pay fiasco and the disastrous implementation of the Oracle system, as well as the rising demand for services and funding cuts. Council leader John Cotton previously condemned the Conservative government and argued councils across the country face a perfect storm of smaller budgets and higher costs while Tory politicians, such as Rishi Sunak, have criticised the mistakes made by the Labour council administration.

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