Highland Council website

The Highland Council has apologised for the loss of public access to its web site: www.highland.gov.uk and the schools closure web site www.schoolclosures.highlandschools.org.uk.

This is the result of an incident at the Inverness College Building at Longman Road, Inverness, where UHI provide our external internet access.

A fractured pipe caused flooding which has leaked water into the air conditioning vents. This in turn dispersed water throughout the building, requiring a switch off of the power from the IT Network services located within the UHI building. For the Council, this has caused the loss of the following IT Services:

• All external e-mail
• All external connectivity and access to the internet
• All Highland Council internet Site Hosted applications eg. PECOS, Phoenixe1
• Schools Closure website
• VPN access to the Corporate Network

The Council is using highlandlife.net (this website) as a means of publishing information about school closures etc.

A Council spokesman said: "This is a major incident and it is not possible at this stage to estimate when these services will be restored. The Council sincerely apologises for the loss of internet access at this time and will restore the service as soon as possible".

Aware of the inconvenience this loss of service is causing to the public at this time of adverse weather, the Council's Service Centre, which handles all telephony services, will be open earlier from 7am to 6pm tomorrow (Tuesday) to deal with increased call levels with 7 members of staff, including a supervisor being on duty. The number is 01349 886606.

Head Teachers are being urged to update the Schools Information Line as early as possible. If a member of the public is having difficulty in finding out about their school, they can phone 01349 886606 and the member of staff will do their best to help.