Google Cloud stated that an outage at its UK cloud site—which disrupted services for British banks, businesses, and courts—has been resolved.
As one of a handful of major cloud computing providers, the company’s infrastructure and services underpin numerous online platforms. Earlier on Tuesday, the company reported “issues with multiple services” at its “europe-west2” data center complex in London.
On Tuesday morning, popular UK services including Revolut, Lloyds Bank, and HSBC confirmed outages, following reports from thousands of users online.
The tech giant apologized to affected users and thanked them for their patience.
In a statement released Tuesday evening, a Google Cloud spokesperson said: “We have resolved the issue that caused an interruption to Google Cloud services in our europe-west2 cloud region, stemming from a power-related incident at a third-party facility.”
“Services have been restored.”
The company also indicated that it would publish an analysis of the incident on its service health dashboard, which provides global customers with real-time updates on the status of its cloud services.
Cloud computing giants—such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud—deliver services to customers via local or regional sites, known as “regions,” which house their data centers.
On Tuesday morning, Google Cloud stated in an update on its service dashboard that several of its cloud services were experiencing “elevated error rates and intermittent network connectivity issues” in the europe-west2 region—a cloud facility located in London, UK.
The company later clarified that the issues stemmed from a “power event” within one of its smaller data center zones, europe-west2-b.
The disruption appears to have affected a number of popular UK-based platforms and services, with customers reporting issues accessing sites such as Royal Mail, DPD, and the e-bike service Forest.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service also reported being aware of issues affecting the video platform used for remote hearings.
Banking Disruptions
The banking sector appears to be among the hardest hit, with customers reporting problems ranging from an inability to withdraw funds while abroad to difficulties completing property purchases.
Rachael Ellen, a 25-year-old Revolut user from Glasgow, told BBC News that she was unable to access her own money.
“I couldn’t pay for parking at a shopping center today because there was an issue with my Revolut account,” she told the BBC.
“This put me in a difficult spot, because at the time, I had no way to access the money I needed.”
She said the system glitch also prevented her from viewing her relative’s transaction history, while the app’s help bot claimed there were no pending transactions.
“Not knowing where the funds were or when I might receive them—it was incredibly frustrating,” Rachel added.
Shortly after 08:00 BST on Tuesday, a platform outage monitor received over 1,500 reports of issues affecting Revolut services.
A company spokesperson stated that some of Revolut’s services had been impacted due to an outage at Google Cloud.
We can confirm that all services have now been fully restored. Customer funds and data remain secure and have been safe throughout.
“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland—all of which are part of Lloyds Banking Group—also reported issues with certain online banking services.
A spokesperson for Lloyds Bank did not confirm the specific cause affecting some of its services, but told the BBC late Tuesday, “We understand the underlying issue has been resolved, so we expect all services to return to normal shortly.”
“Incredibly frustrating”
Guy Bebart, who works for a family-run vegetable box company, stated that he was “severely impacted” by Tuesday’s outage.
Bebart, from Preston, told the BBC that due to the technical issues, the company—which supplies fresh fruit, vegetables, and other produce to customers across the UK—was unable to access its website to download and process customer orders.
“We were also unable to enter parcels into DPD’s system for collection, which means orders that were supposed to be dispatched today may now be delayed,” he said.
“Worse still, customers couldn’t access our website to place orders, meaning we lost valuable sales while the system was down.”
He noted that such disruptions could have “serious financial consequences” for small businesses like his.
“We don’t have the resources that large companies do to simply absorb a loss in revenue—especially when we’re dealing with fresh, perishable produce that needs to reach our customers in a timely manner,” Bebart added.
Reliance on the Cloud
This Tuesday’s incident comes almost exactly one year after a major outage at an AWS cloud site, which knocked more than 1,000 websites—including those of UK banks—offline for several hours.
Experts note that this latest disruption highlights how many businesses remain dependent on core services provided by a small number of large cloud operators.
“The Google Cloud outage serves as a reminder of just how deeply our economy relies on a handful of cloud service providers,” says Professor Feng Li, Vice Dean for Research and Innovation at Bayes Business School.
He added that it remains unclear what exactly caused the power-related issues experienced by Google Cloud.
Large-scale cloud systems are complex, and failures are, to some extent, inevitable.