Hospitals, GPs, police forces and property agents across the UK have been hit by the global Microsoft outage. Here’s how the disruption to email and other IT facilities has affected key services.
Healthcare
The NHS experienced “serious” and “widespread” disruption across the UK on Friday as a result of the Microsoft outage, with hundreds of hospitals, GP surgeries and community health services affected, senior health sources said.
While some doctors, hospital workers and NHS night staff told the Guardian they first noticed problems accessing emails during the early hours of Friday morning, the severity of the problem became apparent to most from about 6am.
The NHS.net Connect system – which more than one million NHS staff use for emails, meetings, calendars, file access and other tasks – is powered by Microsoft. The outage meant many could not log in, perform basic duties, or send and receive patient data needed for the delivery of healthcare.
NHS sources said the outage caused disruption to a range of Microsoft 365 services relied upon by staff, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Copilot. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency also said it was experiencing problems sending and receiving emails.
Some staff resorted to using patients’ paper records after being unable to access email and other IT facilities. An NHS England spokesperson said: “Local NHS services are enacting longstanding measures to manage IT outages and ensure critical services and appointments can continue for patients today.”
Patients were urged to attend appointments on Friday unless advised otherwise, and to continue using 999 for emergency situations.
Inevitably though, some operations and appointments were cancelled. Some staff said they were unable to send urgent messages about referrals for cancer and other serious conditions. NHS community services staff expressed concerns that patients who usually contact them via email, sometimes with very urgent needs and requirements, were unable to do so.
Some local NHS organisations posted on social media requests for patients to contact them by telephone. However, some GP surgery staff told the Guardian they were inundated with patients calling on Friday to check whether appointments were going ahead.
By Friday afternoon, some NHS doctors reported being able to send and receive emails again. The full extent and impact of Friday’s disruption on the NHS will probably not be clear for some days.
Courts
Cases at magistrates, crown and civil courts were cancelled or delayed, as the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary relies on Microsoft platforms, including Outlook, for email.
Minshull Street crown court in Manchester was among those affected, with Judge Maurice Greene sending jurors home for the weekend on Friday morning as their case, in which nine men are on trial accused of raping a woman who was drugged by her husband, was abandoned for the day.
Greene told the jury that staff had been hunting for a fax machine as an alternative to email. “Many institutions rely on Microsoft 365, as do the court and various institutions connected to the court, so there have all been sort of delays because of this,” he said.
The outage affected all levels of the court system, right the way up to the supreme court, the highest court in the land. “The Court is currently not receiving emails, but the Portal and contact forms are still functioning as normal,” it said in a post on X.
Civil court cases, including in the family courts, were also affected, with planned judgments unable to be handed down. These are normally sent remotely, by email, meaning that some judgments have been delayed until Monday.
The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service said that all civil and criminal courts are running, but that “some hearings are subject to delays”.
A Downing Street spokesperson said people should “continue to attend courts and tribunal systems where they are able to”.
Police
The main reported casualty for policing was the service for people to report crimes or concerns online.
Forces said emergency calls to 999 were unaffected. Instead, back office roles, including communication departments, HR and some internal email systems, were worst hit.
One senior source in a southern English force said: “It was more of an inconvenience rather than an operational challenge.”
A spokesperson for Durham constabulary, in north eastern England said: “Frontline services and our ability to respond to incidents remain unaffected. Although our online crime reporting service has been down for several hours, our 999 and 101 lines have remained in constant operation for the public.
“Our primary issue has been around the loss of email, which means we anticipate a potential backlog of non-urgent demand once the outage is fully resolved.”
Britain’s biggest force, the Metropolitan police, which covers London, said: “Officers and staff were unable to access emails via Outlook, but are now starting to see this service resume. Business continuity plans were put in place to reduce the impact on services. ”
One force said when Microsoft started to work again, about 80 emails were waiting, but none of them urgent.
Indirect effects may include the need for officers who were due to attend court cases to book time off regular duties to attend rescheduled cases.
Police officers increasingly communicate by email – but Friday saw a return to calling up their colleagues.
Housing
The property industry said “old-fashion common sense” saved the day during the Microsoft outage as parties spoke directly and made hand deliveries to get sales over the line.
The end of the week is a popular choice to move house as people use the weekend to settle in.
Ian Harris, president at property professionals’ body NAEA (National Association of Estate Agents) Propertymark said that many agents, lenders and conveyancers use purpose-built online portals that would have been unaffected by the outage.
David Strank, who runs Kent-based Stranks Removals & Storage, told the Guardian that the moves of two customers had been disrupted by the outage but after a nervous wait were eventually able to go ahead.
He suggested the email-based “exchange of contracts” stage of deals would have been more affected by the technical issues than actual completions and house moves.
Jeremy Leaf, principal of Jeremy Leaf + Co in north London, said on Friday morning: “As a contingency, we’re advising customers to try to use telephones or even communicate by hand where possible.”
