LEC (Leicestershire) scraper failing — intermittent TCP connection refused

[symroe]

Error (2026-06-17)

is_connect error: wreq::Error { kind: Request, uri: https://democracy.leics.gov.uk/mgWebService.asmx/GetCouncillorsByWard, source: Error { kind: Connect, source: Some(ConnectError("tcp connect error", 81.131.36.159:443, Os { code: 111, kind: ConnectionRefused, message: "Connection refused" })) } }
Duration: 0.4s

Current state (2026-06-19)

democracy.leics.gov.uk is now returning HTTP 200 with valid ModGov XML from curl (response in ~5.3s). The scraper code requires no changes — the endpoint is working.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<councillorsbyward>
  <wards>
    <ward>
      <wardtitle>Ashby de la Zouch</wardtitle>
      ...

Assessment

The "Connection refused" (errno 111) was a transient server-side outage — the server's TCP stack was actively rejecting connections, not timing out. The server has since recovered. No code changes are needed.

What needs to happen

Monitor whether the connection refused error recurs. If it appears consistently in the failing feed over multiple consecutive days, investigate whether:

• Lambda's IP range is being periodically blocked by the server
• The server has a recurring maintenance window at the time the scraper runs
• A code fix (e.g. http_lib = "playwright") is needed to bypass WAF filtering