UK Power Outage Disrupts Google Cloud, Revolut and Major Banks
A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London disrupted several digital services and banking operations across the United Kingdom on Tuesday, October 20, 2026.
The incident affected Google Cloud services and caused problems for customers of digital bank Revolut and major UK lenders Lloyds and HSBC. Other businesses, including property and delivery services, also received reports of service disruptions.
Google Cloud Reports Service Recovery
Google said the outage began at 0608 GMT due to a power-related incident affecting its London data centre, part of the europe-west region.
In a service health update, the company reported that most affected workloads had begun recovering by 1210 GMT, approximately six hours after the incident started. Google said it would publish a full incident report in the coming days.
Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC Customers Affected
Revolut customers experienced disruptions involving ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and bank card top-ups. The company said it was working to resolve the issue and apologised to affected customers.
Revolut also confirmed that customers' money and data remained safe.
Lloyds and HSBC acknowledged that some customers had difficulties accessing their banking services. Lloyds said it expected its services to return to normal after the underlying issues were resolved, while HSBC said it would continue monitoring the situation.
According to Downdetector reports cited in the news coverage, other UK services, including Rightmove, DPD and Royal Mail, also experienced reported problems.
Cloud Dependence Raises Concerns
The incident has renewed concerns about businesses' reliance on a small number of major cloud providers. Cloud platforms allow companies to access computing resources without building and maintaining extensive physical infrastructure themselves.
However, disruptions to data centres or other essential infrastructure can affect multiple businesses simultaneously when their systems depend on the same provider.
University of Surrey cybersecurity professor Alan Woodward noted that major cloud providers remain vulnerable to local infrastructure failures, with potential consequences across interconnected services.
The growing demand for cloud computing driven by artificial intelligence is also increasing reliance on large providers such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
The incident highlights the importance of resilient infrastructure, backup arrangements and effective recovery plans for businesses that depend on cloud-based systems.
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