Google Cloud services have been restored following a significant power-related incident at a data centre near London that disrupted operations for several major UK banking institutions and various other businesses on Tuesday. The outage, which began at 0608 GMT, impacted the efficiency of digital platforms for millions of users, leading to difficulties with ATM withdrawals, bank transfers, and card top-ups.
By 1210 GMT, the US-based technology giant confirmed that the majority of workloads in its "europe-west2" region—the specific cloud area serving the London metropolitan region—had returned to normal functionality. The six-hour disruption prompted a series of responses from affected organisations as they sought to reassure their clients and manage the technical fallout.
The impact of the outage was widespread, affecting several high-profile financial service providers. Revolut, the digital banking platform, noted that its services, including card transactions and app access, were significantly hampered. A spokesperson for the bank issued an apology to customers while stressing the security of the platform, stating, "We can confirm that all our customers' money and data are safe."
Similarly, Lloyds Bank and HSBC confirmed that their customers had encountered problems while attempting to access online banking services. In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Lloyds indicated that it expected services to return to full capacity following the resolution of the underlying cloud infrastructure issues. Both banks continued to monitor their systems throughout the remainder of the day to ensure stability.
The disruption was not limited to the financial sector. Internet service tracking data from Downdetector recorded a sharp increase in user reports regarding difficulties with other major UK entities, including the Royal Mail postal service, delivery firm DPD, and the property website Rightmove. This highlights the growing reliance of diverse industries on a consolidated cloud infrastructure provided by a small number of global hyperscalers.
The reliance on such providers allows companies to access vast computing power and storage without maintaining their own server farms, yet this convenience creates risks during central infrastructure failures. Analysts, including Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Surrey, noted that while global companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon possess the scale required for modern digital operations, their concentrated data centres remain susceptible to localised failures.
Woodward pointed out that the current global push toward artificial intelligence is further driving the demand for such high-capacity cloud infrastructure, making the need for resilience and contingency planning more critical. Tuesday’s incident follows previous global outages, such as the disruption affecting Amazon’s cloud services last year, which caused temporary failures for various online gaming, business, and transport networks globally.
Google has stated that it intends to release a comprehensive incident report in the coming days to provide clarity on the technical causes of the outage. As businesses continue to migrate critical operations to the cloud, the event serves as a stark reminder of the potential for cascading consequences when a single provider experiences a technical setback in its regional infrastructure.
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