Clarion Housing Group has given an update on the recent cyber security incident, saying that “we are now confident that our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, which is our main store of customer data, was not accessed”.

The housing association says the attack “caused significant disruption to our services” and that “as our work continues it is clear that the damage to our systems is extensive”.

The organisation warns that it could be a long wait until it is fixed.

In a statement, Clarion said: “With the help of our cyber security partner and other incident response specialists, we are working hard to bring all of our systems back online and in some cases rebuild them completely.

“To do this in a safe and secure way takes time because of the complexity of the incident and our network. We are prioritising those systems that will enable us to better support our residents.

“We’re sorry for how long people have experienced interruption to normal services. We wanted to have recovered more rapidly but the cyber incident has caused significant damage to our systems. In the meantime, we have put in place a number of additional ways people can contact us.”