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Highland Council's last full meeting abandoned amid severe IT problems that were 'beyond its control' and it will now be rearranged for early in January


By Scott Maclennan

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Highland Council's Headquarters.
Highland Council's Headquarters.

Highland Council has confirmed the full meeting that was due to be held today will now take place in three weeks on January 7.

The local authority maintained that the IT issues that prevented members from joining the online debate that led to the meeting’s postponement were beyond its control.

It was hoped that the IT provider Wipro would be able to find a fix in time for tomorrow but eventually councillors were told the meeting would have to be abandoned.

A number of vital issues were to be discussed and decided such as the local authority’s capital budget but they will all now have to wait though the agenda will be unchanged.

During the roll call just 45 of 73 councillors were able to get online for the remote meeting with Wipro saying it was having technical problems with its Virtual Private Network (VPN).

A VPN is typically used to make it difficult to trace and therefore hack into a computer system.

A council spokeswoman said: "Our Information and Communications Technology provider Wipro has apologised for our VPN connection issue this morning."

The multi-million pound Wipro contract is due to be brought in-house with council insisting this was based on economic grounds but it is understood significant under-performance played a major role in the decision.


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