Scottish Government activates resilience operations after Microsoft outage in Scotland 2026

Key Points

• The Scottish Government activated its resilience operations after a worldwide Microsoft outage disrupted public services.
• Justice Secretary Neil Gray stated that the Scottish administration is still operational and that business continues despite the technical fault.
• Police Scotland announced that it cannot receive emails and warned of delays with online contact forms, including the ContactUs portal.
• NHS Grampian reported that staff and services cannot access Outlook emails, while phone lines and clinical systems continue to work normally.
• Edinburgh, Glasgow, East Lothian, West Lothian, Midlothian, Dundee, and the Scottish Borders faced email and online form disruptions.
• Schools in the affected council areas asked parents and carers to use the telephone instead of email to get in touch.
• Community pharmacies warned that communication issues with GP practices could delay prescriptions.
• Microsoft stated that the global outage, running from Thursday 12 November into Friday 13 November 2026, stemmed from server settings applied after an update and was not a cyber attack.

Oxford (Oxford Daily) November 13, 2026 – Why has the Scottish Government activated its resilience operations following the global Microsoft outage?

The Scottish Government has formally activated its resilience operations in response to a major global Microsoft outage that has disrupted email systems and online contact forms across Scottish police, health boards, schools, and local councils.

As reported by Katrine Bussey of The Independent, Justice Secretary Neil Gray stated that the administration “remains operational and business continues” while emergency coordination arrangements monitor the impact of the IT failure across public bodies.

The Scottish Government Resilience Room (SGoRR) coordinates central government emergency responses and public communications when technical or civil incidents require national oversight.

How has the Microsoft outage affected Police Scotland and emergency services?

As reported by Matthew Fulton of STV News, Police Scotland confirmed that its online contact forms, including the ContactUs portal, have been directly affected by the worldwide disruption.

In a public statement issued on social media platform X, Police Scotland explained that officers and staff are currently unable to receive any emails.

“We are unable to receive any emails, and there may be a delay in responding to any forms sent to us in the last 24 hours as this outage continues. Non-emergency? Call 101. Emergency? Call 999.”

The force confirmed that its emergency and non-emergency telephone lines remain fully operational throughout the disruption.

Which Scottish health boards and medical services are experiencing disruption?

Health services across Scotland have also reported communication difficulties caused by the failure of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange services.

As reported by Katrine Bussey of The Independent, an NHS Grampian spokesperson confirmed that the health board has been hit by the Outlook outage, preventing staff and services from accessing emails.

The NHS Grampian spokesperson added that telephone lines and all other clinical systems within the health board are working as normal.

As reported by Matthew Fulton of STV News, pharmacy teams across Scotland also faced operational challenges due to the software failure.

A statement highlighted by STV News noted that the outage affects a pharmacy’s ability to communicate with GP practices and some patients, warning that waits may be longer than normal and that there may be delays to some prescriptions.

Which Scottish councils and schools have been impacted by the IT failure?

Local authorities across Scotland reported widespread interruptions to their external email servers and web-based customer contact portals.

As reported by Matthew Fulton of STV News, affected local authorities include Glasgow City Council, the City of Edinburgh Council, East Lothian Council, West Lothian Council, Midlothian Council, Dundee City Council, and Scottish Borders Council.

A spokesperson for the City of Edinburgh Council stated that due to the worldwide Microsoft outage, the authority is unable to send or receive emails and some online forms are unavailable, advising residents to make contact by telephone.

Glasgow City Council issued a notice asking residents to avoid using online forms or sending emails while engineers work to restore services, confirming that schools had texted parents and carers to telephone their school directly if needed.

East Lothian Council advised residents to call its main switchboard on 01620 827827 and instructed parents and carers to telephone their child’s school rather than sending emails.

Scottish Borders Council issued similar guidance, asking residents with urgent enquiries to call 0300 100 1800 and advising parents to telephone schools directly.

Higher education institutions were also affected, with the University of Aberdeen confirming on its staff news portal that staff and student emails, Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and Teams were disrupted.

What caused the global Microsoft 365 and Outlook outage?

The technical disruption began on Thursday 12 November 2026 and extended into Friday 13 November, affecting businesses, airlines, and government agencies across 74 countries.

According to Microsoft service updates, the company confirmed that the issue was not caused by a malicious cyber attack.

“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that the change is not taking as expected.”

Microsoft attributed the failure to network configuration settings applied to servers following an update, which caused a process establishing secure connections to become overwhelmed and stop handling requests.

The company initiated a rollback of the recent network configuration change and deployed a software patch to restore server stability across Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft 365.

Meanwhile, the UK Government stated that it had “robust contingency plans” in place to minimise disruption caused to public services across the United Kingdom.

Background of the Development

The activation of the Scottish Government Resilience Room (SGoRR) reflects established emergency governance protocols designed to coordinate multi-agency responses during major infrastructure or civil disruptions.

Historically, SGoRR has been convened for severe weather events, public health emergencies, and major technical failures, including the July 2024 CrowdStrike-related IT outage that disrupted Windows systems across healthcare, transport, and government sectors.

Following the 2024 CrowdStrike incident—which cost the UK economy an estimated £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion—both the UK and Scottish governments increased their focus on digital resilience and single-supplier dependency risks across public sector infrastructure.

Just two days prior to the November 2026 outage, Justice Secretary Neil Gray had warned that Scotland needed to prepare for modern infrastructure vulnerabilities, including cyber threats and power or communications disruptions.

Prediction: How This Development Can Affect Scottish Public Services and Residents

For residents across Scotland, the immediate impact of the outage is a temporary shift away from digital self-service portals back to traditional telephone communication for routine council, school, and healthcare enquiries.

Patients awaiting repeat or acute prescriptions may experience longer waiting times at community pharmacies until electronic communication channels between GP surgeries and dispensaries are fully synchronised.

For public sector administrators, police, and local authorities, the clearing of backlogged emails and queued online forms submitted during the 24-hour disruption window is expected to create administrative delays over the coming days.

In the longer term, repeated reliance on emergency resilience protocols for cloud software failures is likely to prompt closer scrutiny of digital contingency planning, offline backup communication channels, and vendor redundancy across Scottish public bodies.