Gloucester cyber attack delaying house buying
Hackers breached the local authority’s IT systems on December 20 and knocked out several of the council’s online services.
House sales in Gloucester are being hindered and people are at risk of losing their mortgage offers due to the impact of the cyber attack affecting Gloucester City Council.
Hackers breached the local authority’s IT systems on December 20 and knocked out several of the council’s online services.
Services, including online application forms used to claim housing benefit, test and trace support payments, discretionary housing payments and council tax support, were affected.
And the council is in the process of rebuilding all of its computer servers.
But people looking to buy a house in the city are also finding they cannot make local property searches required for their purchase to go-ahead.
Estate agents in the city also say they are aware of the issue and one local resident said the situation was like being in “housing purgatory”.
“We were all happy and good to go. In theory our house purchase was not going to be very complicated but then the cyber attack happened at the end of December which knocked out the solicitor’s ability to do the local search,” they said.
“This search is when they look back through the planning history and see if there is anything contentious. It is a key bit of information that mortgage lenders need to know so that they know what the money is being lent for.
“That’s the major complicating factor. Now we are in a situation where our mortgage lender is very cautious about how we can get around this.
“In theory, you can get a specialist insurance policy but it’s just been an unbelievably lengthy period of back and forth between our solicitor and our lenders. It’s an unprecedented situation.
“They’ve never had this kind of matter to negotiate where they cannot do a search because of the cyber attack.
“Mortgage offers don’t last forever and we are getting to the point where it could be rescinded or need reapplying for.
“We are in total limbo and at the whim of whether they will accept this specialist insurance policy.”
The council says they are doing all they can to address the issues as quickly as possible but ask people to be patient as they are working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency to understand more about the cyber attack.
Council leaders also revealed recently that they had no insurance to cover cyber attacks and have set aside hundreds of thousands of pounds to fix the problems caused by the hack.
“As the situation is still being investigated it is unfortunately not possible to give a current timeframe for when we’re able resolve the issues and we are unable to share any further details as it is an active investigation.
“We are taking the situation extremely seriously and thank residents for their co-operation and understanding,” the council says on its website.
They say residents can still access advice and information via their website including emergency numbers if they need to contact the council.