Tuesday July 15th 2025
West Lothian Council Headquarters
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Stuart Sommerville
Councillors have been given an assurance that they will learn the full costs of the recent cyber attacks on West Lothian’s schools.
Following dramatic arrests of suspects involved in the attacks on stores including M&S and the Co-op, there’s little sign of similar breakthrough in the investigation which has been ongoing since May.
And while it could be a year before the live investigation is wound up, senior officers told councillors before the recess that online systems should be fully operational by August, and the eventual costs would be delivered to committee.
At the last meeting of the Audit Committee before summer recess, committee Chair Councillor Angela Doran-Timson asked “Is there a timescale for when it will be possible to know the costs?”
Depute Chief Executive Graeme Struthers told the meeting: “It’s an ongoing live criminal investigation. There’s a limit to what I can disclose in a public forum.
“Once once we have restored the education environment, which is of course separate from the corporate environment, we’ll then have an indication of the costs incurred and a future update will be given to the committee.”
He added that technicians were working to restore the education platform over the school holidays.
A report the Audit Committee said: “As investigatory works are ongoing, it is not possible to estimate with any accuracy the exact cost for the council of this cyber incident, either in terms of initial and ongoing response but also restoration of the network and associated systems.
“The council does however recognise that the cyber incident liability will result in additional and un-budgeted costs for the council.”
The report added: “This remains a live criminal investigation with the council working with Police Scotland, the Scottish Government and other external organisations and agencies to investigate the full impact of the incident and restore systems.”
A council spokesperson told the LDRS: “The recovery phase of work to restore services back to normal is ongoing, and we will have a new Education Network in place for the start of August 2025 term to support learning.”
“A small percentage of the total data stored on our Education Network has been compromised but only a very small proportion of the files that were compromised were of a personal and sensitive nature.
“There is no evidence that any data was compromised from the majority of our schools. There is however evidence that a small amount of information held by a number of our secondary schools, and one primary school, was compromised.”
The spokesperson added that parents and carers had been offered advice on on-line security and added: “This is an ongoing investigation and if there is a need to contact parents/carers in future, we will do so.”
For more information on security go to www.westlothian.gov.uk/cyberattack
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