The Council is continuing to work hard to recover systems needed to resolve significant disruption created by the serious cyberattack that has prevented residents accessing some Council services in recent weeks.

While some of our services may be unavailable or disrupted for months, key essential services, including our coronavirus response, continue to operate. Some vital services that had been disrupted have now fully or partially returned, or the Council’s teams have created new or temporary ways for residents to access them.

This has impacted services across the Council – including those for Council tenants and homeowners.

Our teams have worked incredibly hard to ensure all essential services for residents have remained in place, and to provide as much support as possible where normal operations have been disrupted.

In non-critical areas some of our services have been slower than usual, and we are not currently able to respond to all requests and enquiries as well as we normally would.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this is causing and grateful for your continued patience while we work to resolve these issues.

Payments

Many payment options are still available for rent, service charges, major works and garages, and we are encouraging all residents to continue making these payments. The following options are unaffected and are safe and secure to use:

• Online payments through our multiple payments portal
• Over the phone payments using the 24/7 automated telephone system by calling 020 8356 5050
• Online bank transfer
• At a bank, Post Office or Paypoint location

Existing direct debits and standing orders continue to be processed.

The online portal for paying rent, paying service charges and checking your balance is temporarily unavailable, and we are temporarily unable to accept payment through the following options.

• by cash or card at the Hackney Service Centre
• over the phone through a member of staff
• by setting up new direct debits.

Please use alternative methods wherever possible.

Enquiries

We are currently receiving a high number of enquiries, and it may take longer to respond than normal. We are temporarily unable to respond to some types of enquiry in full and provide information such as rent statements, payments records and repair histories, either in writing or over the phone.

In particular, we are temporarily unable to respond in detail to enquiries around actual service charge bills for 2019-2020.

Emails sent to neighbourhood@hackney.gov.uk, income.services@hackney.gov.uk and service.charges@hackney.gov.uk between 12 October and 26 October cannot now be accessed. Please re-send any enquiries that have not been responded to and remain outstanding and we will respond as soon as possible.

Repairs

The online form for reporting repairs is temporarily unavailable. Repairs can still be reported over the phone by calling 020 8356 3691.

Service status

A range of Council services are affected by the disruption caused by the cyberattack that will affect our residents, including areas such as benefit payments and Council Tax payments. Stay up to date on the latest at hackney.gov.uk/service-status