Council files damaged in 'once-in-a-lifetime' event

Nottingham City Council said an outage that has caused days of disruption was likely caused by a "once-in-a-lifetime" power failure.

The authority said its core IT systems and phone lines were disrupted by the outage on Thursday, subsequently impacting the council's data centre, which houses computing and networking equipment.

The "unprecedented" outage meant all systems went offline, causing damage to files and hard drives.

On Monday, the council said power had been reconnected, enabling some systems to get back online but added further repairs and testing were required.

The authority said external engineers described the outage as a "once-in-a-lifetime" event they had never seen before.

A council spokesperson added: "Investigations have now found that the likely cause was a failure within the electrical safety circuit of the high-voltage switchgear at the council's headquarters.

"This meant that when the power went out, the electricity generated by back-up generators couldn't get back into the system to power anything.

"The power outage subsequently impacted the council's central data centre, which houses computing and networking equipment for the whole council."

The council said it had been working round the clock with contractors to fix the fault.

Phone systems were working again, the council said, but it recommended people continued to use emails to get in touch for the time being.

Further repairs and testing will take place later in this week.

Council chief executive Sajeeda Rose said: "I'm extremely proud of our teams have acted extremely quickly to step up business continuity plans to ensure continued services to our most vulnerable people, as well as our customers.

"This has meant teams having to adapt at lightning speed.

"Unexpected disruptions like these test our ability to adapt, and I want to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible resilience, patience, and professionalism colleagues have all shown in response to this unexpected challenge."

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