Leicester City Council has said it will take at least until the middle of this week to get its IT systems and phone lines running again following a cyber incident.
It said the incident, so far unspecified in nature, took place on Thursday of last week.
Richard Sword, the council’s strategic director of city developments and neighbourhoods said: “Over the weekend we have continued to work with our cyber security and law enforcement partners, as well as learning from other councils who have had attacks, to identify the nature of the incident and the steps we need to take to get our systems back online.
“We expect that it will take until at least the middle of the week before we will be able to start the recovery process, beginning with our most critical services.
“We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing. Council officers are working hard to ensure that our frontline services continue to operate with the minimum of disruption.
“Advice and assistance is still available on our website at Leicester.gov.uk, and we have today set up more emergency phone lines in addition to those established last Thursday. These numbers are to aid those who need urgent assistance and not for general enquiries.”
The incident is the latest in a continuing trend of cyber attacks inflicting serious disruption on local authorities. In recent months incidents have affected Canterbury, Dover and Thanet in Kent, St Helens in Lancashire, and several councils were affected indirectly by an attack on the systems of software supplier Capita.
