BRADFORD Council has been accused of failing to brief councillors on its recent cyber attack. 

Its website was down from last Thursday morning, with much of the site not returning to use until over the weekend. 

Yesterday, it revealed it had suffered from an attempted cyber attack - but said there was no evidence that data had been compromised.

The Conservative group on Bradford Council has both praised and questioned its response to the attack.

Councillor Rebecca Poulsen, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group said: “The reason for the recent Council website difficulties, encountered by local residents and Council staff, only came to my attention on Monday, via social media, despite the problem being spotted on Thursday.

"I would have thought that, the fact that it was due to a massive cyber attack might have been something that elected members might have been briefed on, in order to keep residents wishing to use the site, abreast of the situation."

She added: "In the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the problem, we were simply advised that it was due to “emergency maintenance”, which provides no indication of the severity of the problem.

"On the positive side, the outcome may well prove beneficial to the Council in the medium term. We now know that the Council’s systems and the IT Security Team behind them are equipped to deal with what is really quite a serious incident and keep residents' data secure. They haven’t contacted the Organised Crime Unit and ActionFraud for something minor.

"I am sure that there will be further useful experience gained from this incident, which will hopefully help the IT Security Team to continue keeping local residents information protected.

"I just hope that one thing that they take on board, is the benefit of keeping elected members abreast of such serious incidents, so that we can keep our residents informed of why the Council website won’t let them do what they need to. People get less frustrated with the Council, when we tell them a proper reason."