County Council data to be shifted to an online London data bank, instead of being stored at its “ageing” HQ

By Eddie Bisknell – Local Democracy Reporting Service

Confidential files from a Derbyshire council are to be moved online rather than stored at its “ageing” HQ.

All of Derbyshire County Council’s data, including confidential social services files, will move online to a datacentre in London as part of the measures which had started under the former Conservative administration in April 2024.

The project then budgeted £6.2 million for the online move, with the council now under the leadership of Reform seeing that figure significantly reduced to £3.95 million with a less complex approach adopted.

The closure of the council’s Shand House offices off the A6 in Darley Dale in October last year saw the authority lose its secondary datacentre – aimed at supporting any failures with its main datacentre at County Hall in Matlock.

A council report says County Hall has “poor suitability” as a datacentre and a “timely decant” is required.

This is aimed at reducing cyber threats and equipment failures.

However, concerns have previously been raised about the price of paying for online “cloud” storage systems, instead of the authority retaining full ownership of its own data, including confidential adult social services and children’s services files.

Further concerns had been raised about the perceived delays in obtaining data, such as case files, which council staff may encounter during the shift from County Hall to the cloud.

The new report says: “With Shand House decommissioned, all remaining on-premises digital operations are concentrated in a single, ageing datacentre at County Hall, increasing operational risk.

“Current disaster recovery capabilities are untested and inadequate; physical risks include water ingress, outdated electrical backup generators, abandoned cabling and network bearer locations. 

“Historical underinvestment has led to technical debt and increased risk profile.”

Building a new fit-for-purpose datacentre at County Hall would cost between £2-£3 million, the council says.

It says around 200 digital systems “that support core council services – including case management, children’s services, websites, data storage – remain in the County Hall datacentre and still require migration to mitigate risks of outages, data loss and to strengthen cyber security posture”.

The council details: “Focus is now on tier-one systems and the mass migration of remaining systems and data to a cloud datacentre.”

It says this will cost between £400,000-£576,000 per year, down from the £1.056 million previously budgeted for.

The council plans to spend £1 million per year on existing licences and Microsoft Azure cloud hosting services – located in London – with data to be transferred from August over the course of 140 days (four-and-a-half months)

A report says the council will save money by freeing up further space at its County Hall HQ.

The council said: “It is conclusive to say that staying in County Hall or continuing to provide our own datacentre services on a new site is not a viable option, and the council is not, and does not wish to be, a datacentre provider.”

The authority says moving its data online also helps to pave the way for merging with other councils through local government reorganisation from April 2028.