Tewkesbury Borough Council has today (Tuesday, 24 September) confirmed that the majority of systems have been brought up safely and securely.

This follows assurance from cyber security specialists that the council systems are safe and no data has been lost as a result of the incident earlier this month.

On Wednesday, September 4, after the council identified an issue within its IT systems, immediate protocols were implemented which meant shutting down all of the services provided online.

The council redeployed staff to towns and large villages across the borough to ensure the most vulnerable had access to the services they rely on.

Alistair Cunningham OBE, chief executive of Tewkesbury Borough Council, said: "I'd like to thank residents and businesses for their patience so far and ask for continued patience as officers begin to go through the backlog of work. Planning and email systems will be operational today as well as financial systems.

"We can confirm that no data was lost as a result of this incident. Our systems detected suspicious activity across a number of machines on our network, and we instigated our cyber response plan immediately. Our top priority will always be the safety of our residents and their data.

"By working with a leading cyber incident response specialist alongside the National Cyber Security Centre, this meant we had the highest assurance that the required investigations took place.

"We will not comment further on operational details for cyber vulnerability reasons. This has been advised by our law enforcement colleagues to ensure we are cyber resilient, future ready.''

The council will gradually revert to using the normal Tewkesbury.gov.uk email addresses. Emails sent to the temporary recovery.tewkesbury.gov.uk will also continue to be responded to.

Council IT teams will be bringing Modern.gov, a democratic service, Public Access, a planning service, and Citizen Access, a council tax management portal, back next week once further security checks have been completed.