Scottish schools, councils and health boards hit by global Microsoft outages

Scottish schools, councils and health boards are among those affected by a global Microsoft outage.

The tech giant is scrambling to find new ways to restore services after the outage left users worldwide without access to emails and Teams, as it admitted fixes were not going “as expected”.

The issue began late on Thursday afternoon and has seen users unable to access many of its most popular services, with thousands worldwide reporting they are unable to send and receive emails through Outlook.

Teams has also been affected for many, with the tech giant’s Copilot AI assistant and other Microsoft 365 services also disrupted.

Monitoring website Downdetector first showed a spike in users reporting problems with Microsoft Teams in the UK at around 6.15pm on Thursday, with more than 130,000 reporting Outlook issues in the US at its peak last night.

Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.

The firm said it had tried several solutions to mitigate the problems, including isolating parts of its infrastructure and shifting traffic to alternate routes.

“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” the company said.

The UK Government said it had “robust contingency plans” in place to minimise disruption caused to services.

What is the impact in Scotland?

Scottish councils and health boards are among those businesses affected, including West Lothian Council, Midlothian Council and the City of Edinburgh Council.

The latter urged parents who need to get in touch with their child’s school today to do so by telephone.

Bodies such as NHS Grampian and Scottish Water also reported issues, while transport firms such as LNER, CalMac, and CityLink were also affected by access to emails.

More to follow…