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Russian cyber attack STILL hampering agents and conveyancers

Property searches taking up to 174 days eight months after local council's system were struck by a malicious attack.

Robyn Hall

Estate agents, conveyancers and homebuyers and sellers in Gloucester are still suffering the effects of a Russian cyber-attack on the City Council eight months ago.

Gloucester City Council (main picture) discovered its systems had been breached in December and the fall out is still continuing with house sales, planning applications and benefit payments all delayed after hackers compromised IT systems.

RECOVERY

The council has already set aside £630,000 to fund recovery work and has been working with the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre to understand more about the attack which is thought to have originated from Russia.

The council has been unable to process land charge searches until recently, with latest figures from Property Searches Direct reporting a whopping 174 day council turnaround (reliant on council staffing resources) and 80 regulated turnaround days (reliant on personal search agents).

By comparison property searches in nearby Cheltenham take just 10 council days and 9 regulated days.”

Gloucester City Council said in a statement: “We’ll provide updates on services as soon as we are able to, however, we are focusing on managing any urgent customer issues and continue to work with the national agencies and our IT partners to bring our systems back on line as quickly as possible.

“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.”

August 12, 2022

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