A worldwide Microsoft outage is disrupting operations across dozens of London institutions, including emergency services, schools, councils, and parts of the NHS. Services such as Teams, Outlook, and Copilot have been impacted, and despite efforts by the tech giant, a fix has not yet been found more than 12 hours after the problem was first reported.
The outage was first reported at around 6pm on Thursday night. Microsoft has said its attempts to fix the issue are not “taking as expected”, but confirmed that the incident was not caused by a cyber-security attack. A heatmap on Downdetector shows that London is the region with the highest number of reported outages since the problem emerged.
Emergency services affected
The London Fire Brigade has confirmed that some services are facing disruption, though its operational response and mobilisation is not impacted and is running as normal. LFB Assistant Commissioner Jamie Jenkins said: "Like everyone we are experiecing the impacts of the global outage. But our operational response and mobilisation is not impacted and running as normal."
The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is one of the forces facing disruption, advising that some online form submissions may be affected. The force said: "If your report is time-critical but not an emergency, please call 101. In an emergency, call 999."
The GMB union has said the outage is impacting ambulances across the UK. Rachel Harrison, the union's national secretary, said: "Those who work in 111 and 999 services are unable to refer patient details in the normal way which is creating a massive backlog and has the potential for chaos." She added that emergency and life-threatening call outs are currently unaffected. It is unclear if the London Ambulance Service is currently affected.
Government, NHS, and councils hit
MPs are struggling to access parliamentary accounts amid the outage, according to the BBC. A parliamentary spokesperson said: "We are aware of the global issue affecting Microsoft email services, which is impacting users of the parliamentary network. We are working with Microsoft to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. Alternative communication arrangements are in place, allowing today’s business to continue."
The NHS is facing major issues accessing Microsoft services on Friday morning. The Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust issued a warning to patients, writing: "Patients: please call your usual CNWL service rather than emailing until further notice. Emails may not be received. We apologise for any inconvenience."
London councils are also facing disruption. Hounslow Council in west London said in a service update that its services had been impacted, explaining that "some of our services may be disrupted today and staff may take longer to respond back to residents." Southwark Council also confirmed it was affected and would be "monitoring" the situation, with emails to and from the council expected to be impacted.
Schools and expert reaction
Schools in London and across the UK have been impacted. As reported by the Guardian, one London school said emails would be delayed until the issue with Outlook is resolved and that parents should phone, rather than email, if their child would be absent. A second London school said it had limited or no access to Outlook and also told parents to email. Mill Hill County School in north London reported that due to the outage, staff were "unable to access emails."
Microsoft said in its latest update that it is seeing "early signs of stabilisation", though services are not yet back up to normal. Prof Awais Rashid, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Bristol, called it "concerning" that Microsoft had not yet found a fix, explaining that organisations fundamentally rely on the tech giant’s services. He said: "Organisations increasingly rely on third party services such as Office 365. And these services play a critical role in day to day functioning of organisations. Whether a cyber security incident or not, their resilience is important to ensure businesses large and small can continue their daily operations. What is concerning is not only that an overload issue occurred but, more critically, that Microsoft does not seem to fully understand the underlying cause and apply an effective fix."
