Regrettably, NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) can confirm that there has been serious interruption to computer services provided by CSC Alliance in the NHS in the North West and West Midlands of England since 10am on Sunday 30 July 2006. This incident was caused by Storage Area Network equipment failure and has affected several other organisations which also use the CSC Maidstone Data Centre.

Technical issues following power system interruptions mean that data held on computers in the central "data centre" for the region cannot be accessed. The nature of the incident meant that service could not immediately be provided by the back-up systems, also provided by CSC Alliance. No data has been lost.

Experts from CSC and its sub-contractor Hitachi have been working round the clock to restore access to data. NHS Connecting for Health has been kept informed about progress. A decision has been made to prioritise the restoration of key services. Whilst some services will be restored within a few hours other services will take longer to restore.

In the meantime the affected Trusts - all those which have had new administrative computer systems installed by CSC - are continuing to provide normal service by operating manual contingency systems. Some 80 trusts (72 Primary Care and 8 Acute Trusts) are affected. NHS CFH and CSC regret the inconvenience this incident is causing and are committed to resolving the issues as soon as possible.