496/68 Friday, November 28, 2025
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Westminster City Council (WCC) have disclosed that several of their IT systems became unavailable after suffering a cyberattack, disrupting key public services including customer service centers, communication channels, and online platforms. Both councils have activated emergency response plans to ensure essential services can continue. The outage occurred simultaneously because RBKC and WCC share parts of their IT infrastructure. Meanwhile, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (LBHF), which also relies on some shared services, implemented additional measures to isolate and secure its network, causing delays in certain services. All three councils-collectively serving more than 360,000 residents-shut down parts of their systems to prevent further damage after the incident was detected on Monday.
RBKC and WCC stated that they are currently working with cybersecurity incident specialists and coordinating with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to contain the threat, protect critical systems, and restore affected services as quickly as possible. Authorities have not yet confirmed who was behind the attack, what their motives were, or whether any data was accessed. However, the councils have reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as required under data protection regulations.
Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont commented that the incident is likely a ransomware attack targeting the IT service provider shared by the three councils, although no threat group has claimed responsibility at this time.
