Police, fire service, and local councils face disruption amid Microsoft outage

Lancashire Fire and Rescue, police, and local councils have urged people to contact them over the phone instead of online.

Lancashire Fire and Rescue, Lancashire Police, and local councils are among the key services hit by a global Microsoft outage.

Several services across the world are affected by a Microsoft outage this morning (Friday, November 13).

placeholder image — Several services across the world are affected by a Microsoft outage this morning (Friday, November 13).

More than millions of users worldwide are currently struggling with “connectivity problems” with some of Microsoft’s online services, including Teams, Outlook, and the Copilot AI service.

In Lancashire, both councils and emergency services are among those hit hardest by technology issues.

Both Lancashire Fire and Rescue and Lancashire Police said their online form submissions had been affected by the outage.

Police have urged anyone wishing to report a crime to do so over the phone. Time-critical, non-emergency calls should be directed to 101 for police, and 01772 862545 for Lancashire Fire and Rescue.

Emergency calls should still go through 999.

The icons for a range of Microsoft apps, including Microsoft Outlook, on the desktop of a laptop

Meanwhile, both Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council said that the outage was causing disruption to their email communications. They too have urged people to contact them over the phone.

In a statement, Lancashire County Council said: “We understand how important it is for residents, businesses and partner organisations to be able to contact the Council and receive timely responses.

“We apologise for any inconvenience or frustration this may cause.

“Please be assured that we are aware of the situation and our technical teams are monitoring the issue and looking to restore normal service as quickly as possible.

“Our priority is to minimise disruption and ensure that essential council services continue.”

Lancashire County Council is among the services affected by the outage | Iconic Media

The issues with Microsoft’s services first began last night, with over 140,000 users reporting issues accessing their emails across 70 countries.

While the official number of users affected remains to be seen, with 430 million users across the globe, the outage is expected to cause major issues for emergency services, hospitals, education, and businesses.

The outage is thought to have been caused by a system overload, and not a cyberattack. The company said a number of its servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, and as a result, the rest of its servers had been put under too much strain.

While engineers are working hard to fix the issue, Microsoft said change “is not taking as expected”.

They have now said they are seeing “early signs of stabilisation”, but can’t confirm when the issues will be fixed.