North Isles residents must not be left out of pocket, says Council Leader

Cllr Heather Woodbridge presses broadband companies on compensation and building future resilience.

Orkney Islands Council Leader Heather Woodbridge has written to broadband providers seeking firm assurances that residents and businesses affected by a prolonged outage in Orkney’s Outer North Isles will be fully compensated, and that stronger measures are put in place to prevent such an incident from happening again.

The outage followed ‘wear and tear’ damage to the Evie-Westray subsea cable on 16 March 2026, impacting islands with a combined population of around 1,700. Connectivity was thankfully restored on 18 April, but meant many residents, who live in some of Scotland’s most remote communities, had been without broadband for more than a month.

While recognising the efforts of engineers, the Council believes the scale and duration of the disruption were unacceptable.  A full post‑incident review, and improvements to contingency planning, response times and communication must be undertaken to ensure the future resilience and reliability of services. Critically, for those affected by this outtage, the payment of full compensation from service providers must be a priority and should be provided automatically to all service users by their service providers.

Councillor Heather Woodbridge, Leader of Orkney Islands Council, said:

“This outage undoubtedly had a serious impact on island communities. People were left without reliable connectivity for weeks, affecting education, businesses and essential services. Residents must not be left out of pocket for a situation entirely beyond their control, and deserve the assurance that measures will be put in place to prevent similar outages in future.

“Alongside writing to broadband providers as Council Leader, I have also written in my role as the Chair of Orkney’s Community Planning Partnership, which brings together Orkney’s public agencies, inviting the companies involved to attend the next Partnership meeting so that we can be assured that lessons have been learned for the future.

“Our island communities deserve fair treatment, clear answers and meaningful action. We will continue pressing for proper compensation for residents, stronger resilience and transparent planning to ensure this does not happen again.”