The Welsh government is among a number of the country's public services that have been impacted by the Microsoft outage.

Schools, GPs and businesses across the globe have been hit by the disruption, which is affecting services including Teams, Outlook and AI software Copilot.

A spokesperson for the Welsh government said they were "monitoring the impact on government services and using contingency arrangements as needed".

Microsoft said it was seeing "encouraging recovery progress" in Europe, but added "some users may still experience intermittent issues". It confirmed the issue was not caused by a cyber-security breach.

The issues started on Thursday, with monitoring website Downdetector seeing problems reported in more than 70 countries.

Emergency services in Wales have been impacted with South Wales Police and Dyfed Powys Police (DPP) experiencing issues with receiving reports on their websites.

DPP also said its general contact centre email address was also impacted. For non-emergencies, they have both asked the public to call 101.

Similarly, North Wales Fire and Rescue Service said it was unable to receive or respond to emails or enquiries submitted through its website.

It assured the public their emergency response service was continuing as normal.

The outage is also affecting access to the NHS, with all health boards saying there may be delays in receiving, accessing and responding to enquiries.

A number of businesses and people in Merthyr Tydfil have been impacted by the outage.

Chris Allen, 40, works at Travel House travel agency, and said they cannot contact customers or send them their booking confirmations on email.

He said a lot more paper is being used, whereas previously you could "just click a button".

Elsewhere, students Louie, Jack and Vinnie were in high spirits as they walked through town after being sent home early due to the outage.

Jack, 16, said his Welsh lesson had been cancelled because staff were unable to access the software and documents needed for the class, while Vinnie, 17, said he had managed to attend a maths lesson this morning because it was paper-based.

Councils including Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) have also experienced disruption to their emails.

The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), which represents and supports councils, said operations "remain under control" and with "no significant impact on services".

A spokesperson said most back-office systems were unaffected and councils said business continuity plans were in place to contact internally and the public where needed.

"If the outage continues into next week, councils may need to consider further contingency arrangements, but this is not currently expected," it said.

Natural Resources Wales (NRW) also reported its email and online reporting system was down, with enquiries to be made via telephone.