A VIRUS resulted in Copeland Council losing vital accounts – costing it thousands to put right.

A source, speaking anonymously to The Whitehaven News , said the virus had attacked files in early summer.

It has been paying a consultant £650 a day to sort out the financial mess – landing the council with a total bill of £3,255 to date.

However, councillors were only informed about the “bombshell” news last week at a special meeting – but were sworn to secrecy.

At the finance briefing called by Mike Starkie, Copeland’s mayor, and his Executive on October 26, councillors, including the audit committee, were said to be stunned to learn for the first time of the problems with the accounts.

The role of the powerful audit committee is to scrutinise financial matters for the council on behalf of the public.

The source said the revelations were like a “bombshell’’ had been dropped.

As a result Copeland said it was reviewing its IT security measures to ensure they are as “robust as possible”.

A council spokesman said issues were raised by the auditors in September, with Mr Starkie meeting with the chair and deputy chair of the audit governance committee and the external auditor on October 21, before calling the meeting on October 26.

The spokesmansaid yesterday: “The closure of our 2014/15 accounts has been delayed by several factors, one of which was a technical problem with one of our servers.

“Some of our data became encrypted after we were hit by a particularly harmful virus, however it has now been retrieved, and we always have hard copies of everything we are required to hold.

“The accounts closure continues and the delay has not caused any long-term problems.

“At no point was any personal information at risk, and we took this opportunity to review our IT security measures and make sure they are as robust as possible.”

Copeland said the problems with the accounts would not affect its annual budget consultations, which are to be held at the end of November.

This looks at the savings needing to be made by the council and requires an initial six weeks of public consultations.