Google Cloud announced that it had restored services at its London data centre complex after a power event caused an outage affecting banks, businesses and courts across the United Kingdom. The company said the disruption originated in the europe-west2-b zone of its europe-west2 region early on Tuesday. Services were initially reported as experiencing "elevated errors and intermittent network failures," and thousands of users logged problems with platforms including Revolut, Lloyds Bank, HSBC, Royal Mail, DPD and the HM Courts and Tribunals Service. By Tuesday evening the cloud provider confirmed that the issue had been resolved and that an analysis would be published on its service health dashboard.

The outage impacted a range of financial and commercial operations. Revolut customer Rachael Ellen in Glasgow reported being unable to pay for parking or view a transaction from a relative, describing the experience as "real inconvenience." More than 1,500 incident reports were logged with an outage monitor shortly after 08:00 BST. Lloyds Banking Group, which owns Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, confirmed that some online banking services were affected but did not specify the cause. A spokesperson later indicated that the root issues had been resolved and normal operations were expected to resume.

Small businesses also felt the ripple effects. Guy Baybutt, who runs the family‑run Veg Box Company in Preston, said the disruption prevented his firm from accessing its website to process orders and from using DPD’s parcel‑booking system, leading to delayed shipments and lost sales of perishable goods. He noted that such outages can have "serious financial consequences" for companies without the resources of larger enterprises.

Analysts highlighted the broader implications of relying on a limited set of cloud providers. Prof Feng Li of Bayes Business School observed that the incident underscores how economies depend on a handful of major cloud operators, though the precise cause of the power problem remains unclear. He emphasized that the speed of recovery and the availability of alternative services are critical factors in mitigating future disruptions.

Google Cloud’s statement attributed the outage to a power event within one of its smaller data centre zones and confirmed that all services had been restored. The company pledged to publish a detailed post‑incident review on its dashboard, where ongoing updates about the health of its global cloud services will be posted.