Google Cloud resolved a disruption at its UK data centre on Tuesday evening after a power event at its London facility caused widespread outages affecting banks, businesses and court services. The company, which operates one of the world's largest cloud computing infrastructures, said the issue stemmed from a power problem within one of its smaller data centre zones known as europe-west2-b. Google Cloud apologised to those affected and said it would publish a full analysis of the incident on its service health dashboard.
Revolut, Lloyds Bank and HSBC were among the UK's most popular services confirmed to have experienced disruption on Tuesday morning. More than 1,500 reports of problems affecting Revolut services were flagged shortly after 08:00 BST. A Revolut spokesperson confirmed that some services were disrupted as a result of the Google Cloud outage but said customers' money and data remained safe throughout and services were fully restored. Lloyds Banking Group, which owns Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, acknowledged that some online banking services were affected but expected all services to return to normal after the root issues were resolved.
The outage rippled far beyond banking. Royal Mail, parcel delivery service DPD and e-bike company Forest all reported problems. The HM Courts and Tribunals Service said it was aware of issues affecting the video platform used for remote hearings. Guy Baybutt, who works for The Veg Box Company, a family-run business supplying fresh produce across the UK, said he was severely affected. The firm could not access its website to download customer orders or book parcels onto DPD's system for collection, risking delays for time-sensitive perishable goods. Baybutt told the BBC that such disruptions have serious financial consequences for small businesses that lack the resources of larger companies to absorb lost revenue.
Individual users experienced real inconvenience. Rachael Ellen, a 25-year-old Revolut customer from Glasgow, told BBC News she was unable to pay for parking at a shopping centre because her account was not working. She also could not view an incoming transaction from a relative and was told by the app's help bot that there were no pending transfers, leaving her frustrated about the status of the payment.
The outage highlights how reliant the UK economy has become on a small number of cloud providers. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud operate regional data centre facilities around the world, with organisations depending on these platforms to run their core services. The incident came exactly one year after an AWS outage knocked more than 1,000 sites offline for hours. Prof Feng Li, associate dean for research and innovation at Bayes Business School, said the latest disruption demonstrated how deeply economies depend on just a handful of cloud providers. He noted that what matters is how far such outages spread, how quickly services recover and whether customers have workable alternatives, though he added it remained unclear what caused the power problem Google Cloud identified.