British Library confirms PLR payments will be made by March deadline following cyber attack

The British Library (BL) has confirmed that Public Lending Right (PLR) statements and payments will be made in advance of the March statutory deadline, following concerns that these could have been impacted by a cyber attack.

In a statement, chief executive Sir Roll Keating confirmed that "workaround arrangements" have been put in place to ensure that payments will be made to authors and illustrators on time. 

"Last month we shared timings for statements and payments to authors, illustrators and others who are entitled to PLR, in both Ireland and the UK, and last week we issued Irish PLR statements, in line with this revised timetable," Keating said. "Although we usually issue both statements and payments a few weeks ahead of the current timeline, I hope this confirmation provides some reassurance to those who may have been concerned about the potential impact of the cyber attack on their PLR payments."

The news follows the restoration of the library’s main catalogue, as well as increased access to its special collections, as it recovers from the major outage caused by a ransomware attack last year. The recovery of access to the collection has required "various manual workarounds", and a timeline for the restoration of other key services will be released later this month. 

"As with the interim arrangements for ordering material held at St Pancras, there may be more of a manual or hybrid element than would normally be the case," Keating added, "but our priority is to restore access to our collection to everyone who needs it".