A Microsoft outage just took down Parliament and NHS email and Downing Street will not say if No 10 is hit
2 hours ago · 13 November 2026Share
Building 92 at Microsoft Corporation headquarters in Redmond, Washington. File photo. Coolcaesar · CC BY-SA 4.0
A global Microsoft outage has knocked out email and messaging systems across Britain's government, police, health service and Parliament.
And Downing Street will not say whether No 10 itself has been hit.
So when did this start? Downdetector first picked up a spike in UK users reporting problems with Microsoft Teams in the evening, two days back. It still isn't fixed.
How big is this? Dozens of countries are affected. Microsoft 365 has hundreds of millions of users worldwide, and one estimate puts the number hit by this specific outage in the hundreds of millions too.
The services down include Teams, Outlook, Microsoft 365, Copilot, SharePoint and OneDrive.
In Britain, the Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade, the Houses of Parliament and the Supreme Court have all been hit. So have schools, NHS trusts and businesses across London.
What caused it? Microsoft says it's higher-than-usual server load. Not an attack. Charles Lamanna, an Executive Vice-President at Microsoft, says there is no indication of malicious or cyber activity.
So what does that actually mean for people on the ground?
NHS England says the outage is hitting email access. But clinical and operational systems are still working fine. The NHS Alliance's chief executive — named as Kieran Devane by one outlet and Sir Ciarán Devane by another, a discrepancy we could not resolve — said the outage had affected some NHS services including email. Waiting times may be longer. Some prescriptions may be delayed, because pharmacies are finding it harder to reach GP practices.
Rachel Harrison, the GMB's national secretary, says 111 and 999 staff cannot transfer patient data the usual way. That's creating a backlog. But she says emergency call-outs themselves are not affected. London Ambulance Service doesn't use Microsoft for its critical platforms at all, so it's untouched.
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Contains imagery from International Space Station Expedition 75 showing Greater London including Canary Wharf, Greenwich Peninsula, and the River Thames. File photo. Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit , Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center · Public domain
Several police forces reported problems with their online crime-reporting forms. Among them, the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Police, North Yorkshire Police, South Wales Police and Dyfed-Powys Police. Hertfordshire Police and Merseyside Police reported the same.
In Parliament, MPs can't access their parliamentary email accounts, which run on Outlook. Alternative arrangements are in place for the Commons' own business. The Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey posted asking constituents for patience because her parliamentary email was down.
The Supreme Court says it can't receive emails. Its portal and contact forms are working normally though. The Bank of England says all its critical operations are running normally, and staff have moved some internal email over to Teams chats instead. Royal Mail says some online services are down and delivery notifications could be delayed. But collection and delivery are continuing as normal.
And then there's Downing Street.
Asked directly whether No 10 itself had been affected, and whether a Cobra meeting would be held, Downing Street wouldn't say either way. It said only that the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, was being kept updated throughout the day.
Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, says the government is still working out which services have been affected. He calls Microsoft a key provider of government services.
Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Manchester airports are all operating normally. British Airways reports no issues. And it's understood Britain's intelligence services are not affected.
Microsoft says services are being gradually restored, with some email beginning to come back. It has stretched its email timeout window to 48 hours, to try to save delayed messages while it recovers.
No timeline has been given for when everything will be working again.
And Downing Street still hasn't said whether its own email was ever down.
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