Google Cloud outage disrupts UK banks, businesses and courts

Power event at London data centre leaves thousands without access to services

By LineZotpaper

Published21 October 2026

Read Time2 min

Google Cloud has resolved a disruption at its London data centre that caused widespread outages across British banks, businesses and courts on Tuesday. The company attributed the disruption to a power event at a third-party facility in its europe-west2 region.

The outage, reported early Tuesday, affected services including Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, Revolut, Royal Mail, DPD and e-bike service Forest. The HM Courts and Tribunals Service also reported issues with its remote hearing video platform.

More than 1,500 reports of problems with Revolut were flagged by users. A Revolut spokesperson confirmed some services were disrupted but said services were now fully restored and customers' money and data remained safe throughout. A Lloyds spokesperson said the root issues had been resolved and they expected all services to return to normal soon.

Customers described inconvenience and lost sales. Rachael Ellen of Glasgow said she could not access her Revolut account to pay for parking and could not see a pending transaction from a relative. Guy Baybutt, from Preston-based The Veg Box Company, said small businesses suffered serious financial consequences as the outage prevented the company from processing orders and parcel collections. He added that it was frustrating that a technical failure outside their control brought much of the business to a standstill.

Google Cloud apologised to those affected and said services had been restored. A spokesperson said the company would publish an analysis of the incident on its service health dashboard. The outage came a year after a similar disruption at an AWS data centre knocked more than 1,000 sites offline, including UK banks.

Analysis

Why This Matters

The outage disrupted essential banking and business services, affecting consumers and small businesses reliant on online platforms.
It highlights the concentration of critical digital infrastructure among a handful of cloud providers.
As more services migrate to the cloud, such outages risk causing widespread economic and social disruption.

Background

Cloud computing giants Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud operate regional data centres that host services for many major organisations. Tuesday's outage was the second high-profile UK cloud disruption in a year; an AWS blackout last October brought down more than 1,000 sites. The growing dependency on a few providers has raised concerns about resilience and competition.

Key Perspectives

Affected customers: Individuals like Rachael Ellen and small businesses such as The Veg Box Company experienced lost access to funds, inability to process orders and lost sales, underlining the real-world impact of cloud failures. Banks and businesses: Revolut and Lloyds confirmed disruption but assured customers that services were restored and data remained secure. Both apologised for inconvenience. Experts: Professor Feng Li of Bayes Business School said the outage is a reminder of the deep dependencies on a few cloud providers. He noted that while failures are inevitable, what matters is how quickly services recover and whether customers have workable alternatives.

What to Watch

Google's post-incident analysis, which it has promised to publish on its service health dashboard.
Whether businesses and regulators reassess reliance on single cloud providers.
The next major cloud outage: if similar events recur, pressure for diversification will increase.

Sources

Google resolves cloud outage affecting UK banks and websites · BBC News

Checked

10 claims in this story checked against 1 source: 6 supported.

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SupportedThe Google Cloud outage disrupted UK banks, businesses and courts.BBC News: “Google Cloud says it has resolved disruption at its UK cloud site which caused an outage affecting UK banks, businesses and the courts.”
Partly supportedA power event at a London data centre left thousands without access to services.BBC News: “More than 1,500 reports of issues affecting Revolut services were flagged to platform outage monitor shortly after 08:00 BST on Tuesday.”
SupportedGoogle Cloud resolved a disruption at its London data centre that caused outages across British banks, businesses and courts on Tuesday.BBC News: “Google Cloud says it has resolved disruption at its UK cloud site which caused an outage affecting UK banks, businesses and the courts.”
SupportedGoogle Cloud attributed the disruption to a power event at a third-party facility in its europe-west2 region.BBC News: ““We have resolved a disruption to Google Cloud services at a third-party facility in our europe-west2 cloud region due to a power event,” a Google Cloud spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday evening.”
SupportedMore than 1,500 reports of problems with Revolut were flagged by users.BBC News: “More than 1,500 reports of issues affecting Revolut services were flagged to platform outage monitor shortly after 08:00 BST on Tuesday.”
Partly supportedRachael Ellen could not access her Revolut account to pay for parking and could not see a pending transaction from a relative.BBC News: “She said the outage also meant she could not view a transaction from a relative and was told by the app's help bot that there were no pending incoming transactions.”
SupportedA Revolut spokesperson said some services were disrupted, services were fully restored, and customers' money and data remained safe throughout.BBC News: “A spokesperson for the company said some Revolut services were disrupted earlier as a result of the Google Cloud outage. “We can confirm that services are now fully restored. Our customers' money and data are safe and remained safe throughout.””
Partly supportedA Lloyds spokesperson said the root issues had been resolved and expected all services to return to normal soon.BBC News: “A Lloyds spokesperson did not confirm the cause of issues affecting some of its services, but told the BBC later on Tuesday “we understand the root issues have been resolved, so we expect all our services to be back to normal soon”.”
Partly supportedGuy Baybutt said small businesses suffered serious financial consequences because the outage stopped his company processing orders and parcel collections.BBC News: “He said that such disruptions can have “serious financial consequences” for small businesses like his own.”
SupportedThe outage came a year after an AWS outage knocked more than 1,000 sites, including UK banks, offline.BBC News: “Tuesday's incident came exactly one year after more than 1,000 sites, including UK banks, were knocked offline for hours during an outage at AWS' largest cloud site.”