Council is given £3.6m after hack crippled its computers

A COUNCIL is being given £3.68m in Government financial support following a ransomware attack by hackers last year which crippled its computer network.

But the cash is well short of the £10.4m Redcar and Cleveland Council said the incident in February 2020 had cost the authority.

Council chiefs said the money was being offered in the form of a grant – not the facility to borrow more – due to the circumstances involved, which remain subject to a criminal investigation.

The council stressed its IT system had been “approved by Government” before the incident and had now been improved with new firewalls and other security measures.

The cyber attack impacted right across all service areas and for a period shut down its website and left staff to rely on pen and paper.

Talks with civil servants in the Department for Communities and Local Government have run for months with the council being asked to provide evidence of the impact as part of a due diligence process before any money could be paid.

Last December, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Simon Clarke said a payment was due to be paid in January and the matter has continued to be raised in council meetings with councillors demanding an end to the saga.

Council leader Mary Lanigan, who fronts an independent/Liberal Democrat coalition, confirmed it had covered the costs from its own reserves.

Experts from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre were drafted in to help restore the council’s computer network after the ransomware attack which knocked payment systems, online appointment bookings and planning documents offline, and scrambled files and data.