Global Microsoft 365 and Outlook outage disrupts email at UK public bodies and hospitals

The outage affected Microsoft services, including Outlook and the Microsoft 365 suite. Notices from UK organisations published on 13 November 2026 point mainly to problems sending and receiving email. Organisations said Microsoft was working to restore the services, but no one knew how long that would take.

Who felt the impact

The problems mostly hit the public sector. The government agency Insolvency Service said in a 4:30pm update that the email problems were easing, although some disruption could continue briefly. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which oversees medicines and medical devices, said its phone lines were working while some services were affected. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said its search and rescue operations were not affected.

At King's hospital, an NHS trust, staff could not send or receive emails. Patients were nonetheless asked to attend scheduled appointments, and procedures went ahead as planned.

Renfrewshire Council said its staff had no access to email. Citing Microsoft, it also said the outage was not caused by a cyber-security breach.

How to contact public bodies

Some organisations advised holding off on non-urgent matters. The National Archives asked people to delay sending enquiries and requests until normal service resumed, so that messages would not be lost during the disruption. Renfrewshire Council warned that replies to emails could be delayed and that online forms might not send automatic confirmation emails.

What this means for you

The sources concern public bodies and do not describe the impact on personal Outlook accounts or other Microsoft services used by residents. If your matter involves a council, government agency or hospital, call for urgent issues and send non-urgent messages once email is working again. If you submit a form online and no confirmation email arrives, it is worth checking that it was received, for example by phone.