BRADFORD Council has announced that the website problems residents encountered late last week were due to a global cyber attack.

The Council website was down from Thursday morning, with much of the site not returning to use until over the weekend.

Today the Council revealed that it had suffered from a cyber attack – but say there is no evidence that residents’ data has been compromised.

A statement from the Council said: “The Council has experienced an attempted cyber attack.

“Suspicious activity was intercepted on Thursday January 16 2020. We have taken steps to reduce the risk and can confirm that there is no evidence of any Council data being compromised.

“The incident is also affecting other organisations globally and the National Cyber Security Centre is currently investigating it. The Council has reported the attempted cyber attack to the Regional Organised Crime Unit and to ActionFraud.

“The Council’s robust network security procedures helped to prevent data being compromised. The extended downtime on our website and external network was necessary while our IT security team investigated and resolved the incident.

“As part of these remediation works the Council website will be unavailable between 4pm and 6pm today. We apologise for any inconvenience this further disruption will cause.”