A global Microsoft outage is disrupting services across Wales, with police forces unable to receive online crime reports and health services reporting issues with patient referrals. The tech giant has confirmed that its fix is not going "as expected" as it works to restore services.
Police forces affected across Wales
South Wales Police said in a Facebook post: "Due to a global Microsoft service issue, we are currently experiencing technical issues with receiving reports made via our website form. If you need to contact police for a non-emergency, please call 101. Always call 999 in an emergency."
A spokesperson for Dyfed-Powys Police said: "We're aware of global issues affecting Microsoft Outlook this evening, which have impacted our ability to receive online reports via the website as well as our general contact centre email address. Until these issues are resolved, if you need to make a non-urgent report, please call us on 101 or send a direct message to this Facebook account. In an emergency, always dial 999."
NHS and health board impact
The outage is also stopping 111 and 999 from referring patient details as they usually would, according to the GMB Union. Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said: "The Microsoft data outage is having a serious impact across ambulance and NHS trusts. 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. Luckily emergency and life threatening call outs appear to be unaffected."
Health boards in Wales are also reporting issues.
Outage scale and cause
The issue began late on Thursday, with users worldwide unable to access many of Microsoft's most popular services. Monitoring website Downdetector showed a spike in reports of Microsoft Teams problems in the UK at around 6.15pm on Thursday, with more than 130,000 reporting Outlook issues in the US at its peak. At around 7am, the website received at least 43,000 reports of Outlook issues across 72 countries.
Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack. The company said it was "not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident".
Recovery efforts and government response
Microsoft said it had tried several solutions, including isolating parts of its infrastructure and shifting traffic to alternate routes. In a post on X, the company said: "We're continuing to work on recovering our frontend servers while implementing further traffic optimisation actions to improve service stability and increase capacity."
The company said: "Our primary mitigation path continues to focus on service stability and controlled recovery. As part of this effort, we are extending the email timeout window to 48 hours to help protect delayed messages while service recovery continues."
Defence minister Luke Pollard said the Government is "engaging with Microsoft" on getting systems back online. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are looking carefully at the outages that Microsoft systems are experiencing. The teams at DCMS who lead for the Government, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, lead our digital work, and they are engaging with Microsoft as they have been to look at how we get systems back online, what the impact is on the wider economy. But for me this reinforces the need for greater resilience."
