Leeds floods a month on: '˜Digitally stranded' at height of flood drama

The authority’s web servers went down for 24 hours during the height of the drama - leaving many key council staff who were helping the aid effort unable to share vital updates.

Councillors are now calling for a tightening up of the authority’s digital systems after concerns were raised by members of an internal council watchdog panel.

Coun Jim McKenna told colleagues: “Living in Kirkstall and being flooded out because of Storm Eva, it was a real problem the fact that email was down. But I haven’t seen the reports telling me what we will do should it happen again.”

He explained that both the main and backup servers of the council’s digital supplier - which were located next to each other - were flooded.

Rothwell councillor David Nagle added: “I found the server being down for 24 hours or whatever it was very difficult. I was talking to local residents who were watching the water rising. I was quite upset that, as the local councillor, I couldn’t even send [residents] an email. I know these things happen but we need to be very aware of this for the future. The officers worked very hard over Christmas and the New Year. But that was a huge problem.”

Conservative councillor Dan Cohen questioned the level of “due diligence”, adding that the authority had been left open to a “fundamental operational risk...given that technology drives us”.

Senior officers told the Resources and Strategy Scrutiny Panel that though there had been unforeseeable issues, the flooding had happened at a time when the council was transferring its web services to a new provider anyway. Responding to concerns about the locations of the new servers, the team told the panel: “We have made sure that the hub we have now does have that separation.”