The government have acknowledged that the Cloudstore, which is designed to allow public sector departments to purchase services via an online portal, has suffered a technical malfunction.

The failure prevented users from searching for suppliers or services. A tweet was released by @G-Cloud: “We know there’s still issues with #cloudstore + @mrcraddock is working v hard w Gov E-Marketplace team to fix it – will update when fixed.”

Steph Gray, director at Helpful Technolgy said: “Baffled again by the @g_cloud_uk Cloudstore. Can you get any results from the search here? [the Cloudstore website]”