North Yorkshire Council has said that some of its “frontline services” are currently affected by a global IT outage.

A worldwide outage involving Microsoft products is also affecting North Yorkshire Council’s digital services including parking payments.

The council said that its parking machines could not currently accept card payments but added that payments could still be made using coins or telephone apps. 

The global IT outages have affected banking, healthcare services, aviation, rail transport and local businesses.

North Yorkshire Council’s assistant director for technology, Madeline Hoskin, said: “Due to a global outage involving Microsoft products, some of our frontline digital services are currently affected.

“This includes card payments at car parking facilities across the county, both on street and off street.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), she added: “However, we have robust plans in place for events like this and would like to ensure the public that the impact on our services has been limited.

“We have been reassured that Microsoft is working hard to solve the problem and have seen the availability of services improving throughout the morning.

“We would urge people to continue to check our website and social media messages for updates.”

Hospitals and GP services across the country have also been affected, forcing some doctors to issue handwritten prescriptions.

However, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust told the LDRS that it was “currently unaffected” by the IT issues.

Microsoft has said that the “underlying cause” of the mass outage had been fixed for its apps but that the “residual impact” would continue to affect some services.

North Yorkshire Council has said it would provide updates via its social media platforms but noted that “this issue is likely to continue until the global IT outage is resolved”.