Lincolnshire councils consider their tech options after five-day outage

A council partnership is looking to strengthen the resilience of its internet connections following a five-day outage in September which affected organisations across the county.

The outage affected the public sector partnership services offered by South Holland, Boston Borough and East Lindsey District Councils along with others at both district and county level. It also affected nearly 300 schools in the county.

However, officers have said the likelihood of a similar event in the future is slim, with the event from September 20-25 being the first experienced by providers KCom/Nasstar in more than 20 years.

A report before South Holland’s Performance Monitoring Panel on Tuesday praises the council’s business continuity plan and the support from Lincolnshire County Council’s Emergency Planning Team.

It confirms the issue was caused by a fault with one of BT’s circuits.

Future options suggested include investing in resilient feeds, connections and/or links.

However, it also suggests: “Do nothing given the likelihood of a similar event in the future is slim.”

Officers have called for the authority’s services to review the business continuity plans for critical activities.

MyLocal Lincolnshire is the new home of The Lincolnite. Download the app now.