Suffolk disrupted, including Greater Anglia and NHS, as worldwide Microsoft IT outage hits the county
Businesses across Suffolk and further afield have been disrupted as the worldwide Microsoft IT outage hit the county.
Greater Anglia has confirmed some of its stations have been affected by the incident.
Originally it posted on X at 8.41am saying its systems were unaffected, but it later posted again at 9.26am saying some of its stations are experiencing issues.
It said it is investigating the matter with ‘high importance’, with station staff aware and able to assist; rail users should check before they travel.
A spokesperson for the operator apologised for the inconvenience caused and said: “There is no impact on our train services, which are running normally.
“However, manual checks are currently needed for some ticket types at stations, as there is a nationwide issue affecting the QR/barcode readers at stations.
“Our supplier is aware and looking into this issue as an urgent priority.”
Airports, banks, trains and broadcasters across the globe have been cut out due to the outage. Sky News has also not been able to broadcast live television this morning.
In the UK, Edinurgh Airport has said its boarding scanners have stopped working, while Thameslink’s four railway brands have experienced problems.
Some reporting systems at the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT), which runs the Ipswich and Colchester hospitals, have been affected.
Nick Hulme, chief executive, said: “All patient care across our hospitals and services is being maintained. Patient safety remains our number one priority.
“We are urgently investigating the extent of the impact of today's worldwide IT outage on our systems at ESNEFT.”
GP surgeries are also experiencing difficulties across the country.
Woolpit Health Centre, in Heath Road, has been affected by the outage.
In a statement on its website, it said the surgery is not able to access clinical records and thus cannot process appointment requests or prescriptions.
Its eConsult service is also inaccessible, thus it recommends its patients with urgent health issues to contact the centre directly.
It also asked patients seeking to book a routine appointment to wait to call until the issue is resolved.
A spokesperson for Stansted Airport said its system were largely unaffected and flights are still operating as normal.
Some retail payment machines were down but are now coming back online, while some airline check in services reverted to being done manually.
The Port of Felixstowe was affected by the outage starting at 5.40am this morning.
A spokesperson said haulage operations have now recommenced and it is working get back to full capacity ‘as soon as possible’.
All of Suffolk’s councils say their systems seem to be working fine for the moment.
Spokespeople have said their IT departments would continue to monitor their systems and will update residents if any services were impacted.
As of writing, cybersecurity firm, Crowdstrike has said issues with one of its updates for Windows were behind the outage.