News Announcement
27 Apr 2022

In a joint statement, the Bar Council’s Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Cree and the Bar Standards Board’s Director General Mark Neale said: 

"The General Council of the Bar (GCB) has suffered a malicious cyber attack. Action was taken swiftly and required taking our IT systems offline in order to stop the attack and prevent any data loss. Our priority remains the protection of our IT systems and data from further attack. We do not believe any data has been lost. We are doing all that we can to fix the problem as soon as possible. Our emails and MyBar have been temporarily unavailable, and Authorisation to Practise and Court ID cards have both been extended. We are working at pace with our cyber security partners to cleanse and restore all systems and services and extend security arrangements. The attack has been reported to the ICO, National Cyber Security Centre and the Police. We apologise to anyone who has had difficulties in contacting our organisations during this time."

Further information:

Authorisation to Practise
The deadline has been extended by a month until the end of June 2022.
https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/resources/authorisation-to-practise-deadline-extended.html

Professional users' courts and tribunals access scheme
HMCTS have agreed to extend ID cards due to expire on 30 April 2022 to 31 May 2022.
https://www.barcouncil.org.uk/bar-council-services/for-barristers/professional-users-court-access-scheme.html

Contact information
The Bar Council and Bar Standards Board remain available to contact via the telephone switchboard on 020 7611 1444.

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