Islington Council has been hit by two “malicious” cyber attacks.

The incidents happened yesterday and on Saturday. Known as “distributed denial of service”, the attacks flooded the council website with traffic. This disrupted Islington’s payment services, including council tax and rent.

The town hall today apologised for the disruption. The attacks have been reported to the National Crime Agency and National Cyber Security Centre to try and find the culprit.

Islington said officers took “swift action” to shut down relevant parts of the website and protect users’ information.

Finance leader Cllr Andy Hull said: “These were deliberate, malicious attacks on the council’s website, flooding parts of it with internet traffic in order to disrupt service.

“There is no reason to believe that any money or sensitive data has been lost or stolen. Nor has ransomware been used. However, we have taken precautionary measures to protect our site and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

“We’re working hard to get online payments back up and running as soon as we can.” Payment deadlines will be extended where people have been disrupted.