A power failure at Google’s London-based cloud computing facility on Tuesday caused significant service disruptions across the United Kingdom. The incident, which Google attributed to a “power event” at its europe-west2-b zone, began affecting customers in the morning and took several hours to resolve. Services began returning online around 1pm, with most customers restored by 3pm, though some operations remained impaired later in the day.
The outage had substantial impacts on critical infrastructure and financial services. The court video system used for remote hearings across England and Wales failed during the morning, leading to delays in legal proceedings. The system is frequently relied upon by defendants in custody who need to appear for hearings. Multiple high street banks and digital financial institutions experienced service disruptions, with customers unable to perform essential transactions. Lloyds-owned Halifax reported login issues via its mobile app and online platforms, while HSBC customers reported account access problems. Revolut, a leading digital bank, saw disruptions across multiple services including card payments, cash withdrawals, internal transfers, and cryptocurrency functionality, though the company confirmed customer funds and data remained secure.
The incident drew attention from financial regulators. The Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority engaged with Google to understand the scope of the disruption. The outage marked the first major test of regulatory oversight following the recent expansion of FCA and Bank of England powers to supervise critical cloud service providers serving UK financial firms. The Treasury’s influential parliamentary committee chair requested detailed information from regulators about their response and the total impact on the financial system, with an initial response requested by 4 November.
Other sectors were also affected by the outage. Property portal Rightmove, satire website NewsThump, and delivery and postal services including Royal Mail and DPD reported disruptions. Google stated it would publish a detailed incident analysis following completion of its internal investigation.
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