A global Microsoft outage that began on Thursday has disrupted public services across the UK, with Outlook and Teams down and key services still struggling to recover. UK National Health Service sources described the disruption as "widespread" and "serious", with staff unable to access the email and IT systems they use to deliver healthcare, The Guardian reported.

In the NHS, the GMB union said the outage was stopping 999 and 111 calls from referring patient details as they normally would, creating a "massive backlog", although emergency and life-threatening call-outs appeared to be unaffected. Patients picking up prescriptions were warned of possible delays, and the BBC reported that some hospitals cancelled appointments such as C-sections because NHS calendars were linked to Microsoft-based diaries, with some resorting to pen and paper. Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust said its teams could not send or receive emails, while Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said its clinical systems were unaffected and appointments were continuing as normal. An NHS spokesperson said local services were using other IT systems or paper records where possible.S1S2

Police forces were also hit, with the Metropolitan Police in London not receiving reports made through its websites and online forms affected. Officers urged people to call 101 or 999 for emergencies rather than report crimes online. In Scotland, Police Scotland said it was unable to receive any emails and that responses to forms sent in the previous 24 hours could be delayed.S1S2

Councils and schools across Scotland were affected too. The City of Edinburgh Council, East Lothian Council and the Scottish Borders Council said they could not reliably send or receive emails and asked residents to telephone instead, with parents urged to call their child's school. NHS Grampian said staff and services could not access emails while telephone lines and other systems were working. Scottish Justice Secretary Neil Gray said the Scottish Government's resilience operation had been activated to assess the impact. Parliament was also affected, with MPs asking constituents to phone rather than email them.S1S3

Microsoft said the outage was not caused by a malicious cyber attack, attributing the problem to higher-than-usual stress on its servers, and its Microsoft 365 status page reported "early signs of stabilisation" while service capacity had not yet returned to normal and traffic was being carefully reintroduced. Analysts said the episode showed how heavily organisations depend on a small number of technology providers, with Joseph Jarnecki of the Royal United Services Institute warning that concentrated dependency on one provider for critical services is a potential enterprise risk.S1S2