Gloucester’s GL1 leisure centre still suffering from city council cyber attack fallout

Leisure services in Gloucestershire are still suffering from the fallout of a cyber attack more than a year after it disrupted council services.

Gloucester City Council’s IT systems were hacked in December 2021.

The cyber attack caused major disruption in the city for months with benefit payments, planning applications and house sales all being delayed.

And Aspire Trust, which runs GL1 Leisure Centre and Oxstalls Sports Park, was also affected.

Their leisure management system was knocked out by the cyber attack on the council’s IT infrastructure.

This was restored at an undisclosed cost to the council in May 2022.

But the vendor who provided the service has since gone into administration.

Council chiefs say the Aspire now needs to source a new leisure management system while using “clerical workarounds” to continue operating.

Councillor Jeremy HIlton (LD, Kingsholm and Wotton) asked at a recent cabinet meeting what problems the cyber attack has caused the trust.

He said it was disturbing to hear that having had the leisure management system restored to the cloud, the vendor then went into administration.

He said: “Now Aspire is back to a clerical work around. Our Conservative controlled ‘vanishing council’ continues to be plagued by administrative problems that are impacting negatively on its services. One wonders if the council’s political administration has run out of steam?”

Performance and resources cabinet member Hannah Norman (C, Quedgeley Fieldcourt) explained in her answer to Cllr Hilton that Aspire’s IT systems are run on the council’s network infrastructure and how the cyber incident impacted their leisure management system.

“As a priority and at the cost of the council, the leisure management system and associated data were restored in a cloud configuration by the software vendor. All unstructured data was also made available to Aspire in May 2022.

“Unfortunately, the trust’s preferred vendor then went into administration and this has left Aspire with the need to source a new leisure management system whilst using clerical workarounds similar to those the council had been using in other services.

“The council continues to support the trust to install a new leisure management system.”

Aspire Trust would not reveal the name of the vendor and declined to comment.

By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter

Gloucester News Centre – http://gloucesternewscentre.co.uk