Microsoft Outage Hit Colchester Hospital and Council Emails

The global Microsoft outage on Friday 13 November disrupted email at Colchester Hospital’s trust, Colchester City Council and Essex County Council. The hospital trust says its systems were working again by 3.30pm. Patients were told throughout to keep their appointments.

Overview

• Colchester and Ipswich hospitals: Microsoft services were restored at 3.30pm. Keep your appointments as normal. Some emails may still arrive late.
• Colchester City Council: still showing an outage notice on its website on Friday evening. For anything urgent, ring 01206 282222.
• Essex County Council: says its systems are returning to normal and out-of-hours and emergency arrangements should work as usual this weekend.

What happened

Microsoft’s service status page reported a “service degradation” on Friday. It said users “may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services”. That covers the email, Teams and office software most public bodies run on.

East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Colchester and Ipswich hospitals, posted its first statement at 8.30am. Mike Meers, the trust’s managing director, said the problem was “not specific to our Trust”.

“As a result, you may experience delays or difficulties sending emails to, or receiving emails from, our services and clinical teams,” he said.

The trust posted an update at 3.30pm. It said email, Teams and other Microsoft applications were “now responding and functioning as normal”. It added that some emails “may take a little longer than usual to arrive” while services settle, and that its IT team would keep watching until Microsoft confirmed a full fix.

The council

Colchester City Council’s website carried a banner on Friday evening headed “Microsoft global outage”. It said the problem was “causing some disruption to our internal systems”.

Residents and businesses can still reach the council by phone and through its website. The council warned that “our staff may take longer than normal to respond to enquiries”. Its general enquiries line is 01206 282222.

Essex County Council, which runs roads, schools and social care, said its systems were “now returning to normal following Microsoft’s global issues”. It expects its out-of-hours and emergency arrangements “to function as usual this weekend”, and asked people to use the normal ways of getting in touch.

What it means for you

• Hospital appointments go ahead. The trust asked patients to attend unless told otherwise.
• If you emailed the hospital on Friday and heard nothing, the message may simply be late. For an urgent clinical question or an imminent appointment, the trust asks you to phone the department, use MyChart, or ring the switchboard.
• Hospital switchboards: Colchester 01206 747 474, Ipswich 01473 712 233.
• For medical help now, use NHS 111 online, in the NHS App or by phone, and call 999 in an emergency.
• Waiting on the city council? Replies may be slower than usual. Phone 01206 282222 if it cannot wait.