DETAIL: Our database server has required an emergency restart

RESPONSE: We are currently restarting all dependent services

UPDATED 21:47: Services have been resolved

UPDATED 10:17 GMT 06 Jan 2010: Our apologies for this very unexpected outage. All website data is safe and all services were returned to normal in 50 minutes.

We were due to upgrade the software licences on our database layer which should have happened automatically. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with our database vendor that caused our database layer to shut down. After emergency discussion with our vendor the issue was resolved.

This is a unique event and will not happen again. We can only apologise for the inconvenience caused by this downtime.