‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ event behind city council power failure

A “once in a lifetime” event was behind the power outage affecting Nottingham City Council’s IT systems since last Thursday (March 13).

The council says staff have been working round the clock with external contractors to fix a issue which has impacted on core IT systems and phonelines since last week.

Investigations have now found that the likely cause was a failure within the electrical safety circuit of the high voltage switchgear at the Council’s HQ at Loxley House. This meant that when the power went out, the electricity generated by backup generators couldn’t get back into the system to power anything.

External engineers have said that this is a “once in a lifetime” event that they have never seen before.

The power outage impacted the council’s central data centre, which houses computing and networking equipment for the whole organisation.

The serious nature of the unprecedented outage meant that all systems went offline, suddenly, and without being able to power off safely, causing damage to council files and hard drives – which is what has led to disruptions to its phonelines and systems.

Power has been reconnected, enabling some systems to get back online but further repairs and extensive testing is required to ensure a fully stable connection.

This is expected to happen later in the week.

The Council’s chief executive, Sajeeda Rose, said: “I’m extremely proud of our teams have acted extremely quickly to step up Business Continuity Plans to ensure continued services to our most vulnerable people, as well as our customers. This has meant teams having to adapt at lightning speed.

“Unexpected disruptions like these test our ability to adapt, and I want to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible resilience, patience, and professionalism colleagues have all shown in response to this unexpected challenge.

“While we are making progress, we appreciate that this situation has been disruptive. We appreciate the public’s continued patience and cooperation. We will keep you updated as much as we can.

“Key updates will be shared on our website and social channels. We do know that a number of systems are down – please don’t try to report these to us, we are aware – and our advice to anyone trying to access Council systems unsuccessfully is to keep a watching eye on our social media channels, where we will share updates.”