Police officers have been forced to abandon digital systems and revert to pen, paper and handheld radios after a global Microsoft outage disrupted communications across UK forces, raising concerns about the handling of urgent intelligence and exposing the vulnerability of essential public services to technology failures.
One Metropolitan Police officer described the disruption as “absolute carnage”, suggesting some control rooms had been forced to return to manual methods of dispatch as digital systems became unavailable.
The problems have extended beyond the loss of online reporting tools. Handheld radios have reportedly suffered a significant deterioration in audio quality, prompting concerns about whether officers can reliably communicate high-risk information over the airwaves.
The outage has also disrupted the exchange of information between police forces. Requests for assistance are normally sent by email, including urgent appeals for help locating high-risk missing people.
One officer warned that the disruption could leave forces facing a substantial backlog of correspondence once systems recover.
“There will have been things we have missed and there will be a big mop up today on emails that were missed and haven’t been actioned,” the officer said.
The Metropolitan Police, South Wales Police and Hertfordshire Constabulary have all warned that online crime-reporting forms may be affected, advising members of the public to use telephone services instead. The Met has urged people to call 101 for non-emergency reports and 999 in emergencies.
The disruption has also hit healthcare, with some patients facing delays in receiving prescriptions because GP practices have been unable to contact pharmacies by email.
The National Pharmacy Association said the outage was affecting access to NHS email systems and disrupting communication between pharmacies, doctors and patients.
“This affects a pharmacy’s ability to communicate with GP practices and some patients,” a spokesperson said, warning that waiting times could be longer than usual and some prescriptions delayed.
Government departments have also been assessing the consequences. A senior civil servant, speaking anonymously, said officials across Whitehall were “assessing and coordinating” the impact, with particular attention to ensuring that core public services could continue operating.
“Mainly it’s to check our data and digital foundations aren’t compromised, which we don’t think they are,” the official said.
The civil servant added that officials had been forced to hold traditional conference calls, rather than relying on Microsoft Teams, which is widely used across government for meetings and internal communications.
“We’ve had to hold actual conference calls this morning, like we would in 2019,” the official said.
The incident has highlighted the extent to which government operations, policing and healthcare depend on a relatively small number of digital platforms. A failure affecting one major technology provider can rapidly spread across services that rely on shared communications infrastructure.
The Government said it had “robust contingency plans” in place to minimise disruption, while departments worked to assess the full consequences of the outage.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that some online submissions could be affected because of the global Microsoft service issue.
The immediate priority for forces and public bodies is to maintain essential services while restoring digital communications and identifying any work that may have been missed.
But the prospect of police control rooms returning to handwritten records, alongside disrupted NHS prescriptions and government meetings conducted by conventional telephone, has provided a stark illustration of how quickly modern public services can be pushed back into analogue operations.
Leave a Comment