A disruption affecting Google's cloud infrastructure in London caused service interruptions for several financial institutions and public-facing services in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2026.
Google Cloud said its engineers had restored service availability following a power-related event in the europe-west2 region, which is based in London. The incident affected organisations that rely on the cloud platform to operate digital services, illustrating how a technical problem at a shared infrastructure provider can spread across businesses that appear unrelated to their customers.
Editorial Insight
Key Highlights
Important points readers should notice.
Issue/Event: Google Cloud disruption affects services in the UK.
Location: London-based europe-west2 cloud region, United Kingdom.
Authority/Organisation: Google Cloud and affected customer organisations.
Action Taken: Google's engineering teams worked to restore service availability following a reported power event.
Impact: Several digital services experienced disruption, highlighting the operational risks of dependence on shared cloud infrastructure.
Reportedly affected services included digital banking functions at Revolut, as well as services associated with Lloyds Bank, HSBC, NHS England, Royal Mail, Rightmove and DPD. The precise impact varied by organisation and service. A cloud disruption does not necessarily mean that every service operated by an affected organisation stopped working.
Why a cloud outage can affect so many services
Cloud computing allows organisations to run applications, store data and operate digital systems using infrastructure managed by an external provider. Businesses use cloud services for websites, customer applications, data processing, authentication and other functions.
Editorial Analysis
Why This Matters
Banking access: Cloud disruptions can affect payments, withdrawals and digital banking functions. Public services: Websites and online systems used by the public may depend on external cloud providers. Business continuity: Organisations need tested recovery plans and clear incident communication. Concentration risk: A shared infrastructure failure can affect multiple organisations at once. Cybersecurity accuracy: A power-related outage should not be reported as a cyberattack without evidence.
This model can reduce the need for every organisation to build and operate its own data centres. It can also make it easier to expand computing capacity when demand rises.
However, when multiple organisations depend on the same provider or geographic region, a disruption can affect several services simultaneously. A problem at a shared infrastructure layer may therefore create consequences across banking, retail, logistics, property platforms and public services.
The degree of disruption depends on how each customer has designed its systems. Organisations with independent backup infrastructure, geographically separated deployments or effective failover arrangements may be able to maintain some services. Others may experience longer interruptions.
What customers experienced
Reports described problems affecting some banking functions, including card payments and ATM withdrawals for Revolut customers. The bank said the disruption affected services but that customer money and data remained safe.
The outage also affected other organisations that rely on the cloud region. Delivery tracking, online services and public-sector websites can depend on several connected systems, so a problem may affect one function without taking an entire organisation offline.
Customers who encounter a digital service interruption should use the provider's official status page or customer-support channel for updates. They should not share passwords, one-time passcodes or banking details with anyone claiming to offer unofficial outage assistance.
The available information does not establish that customer data was stolen or that the incident involved malicious activity. The reported cause was a power event, and any claim of a cyberattack would require separate evidence.
Why regulators are concerned about cloud concentration
Cloud providers have become important suppliers to banks and other organisations that deliver essential services. This creates a resilience challenge: a provider can be technically advanced and still experience an outage that affects many customers at once.
Regulators have increasingly focused on the risks associated with a small number of major technology companies supplying critical digital infrastructure. Their concerns include operational resilience, concentration risk, incident reporting, recovery planning and the ability of financial institutions to continue serving customers during disruptions.
A single incident does not prove that cloud computing is inherently unsafe. Instead, it demonstrates why businesses need to understand their dependencies and plan for failures, including those originating outside their own systems.
Lessons for businesses and public services
Organisations can reduce the impact of cloud outages through several measures:
- Maintain documented continuity and disaster-recovery plans.
- Test backup systems rather than assuming they will work.
- Identify services that depend on a single cloud region or provider.
- Establish clear customer communication procedures.
- Review contractual responsibilities and incident-reporting arrangements.
- Consider whether critical functions need geographic redundancy or alternative processing arrangements.
Multi-cloud systems are not automatically more resilient. They can introduce additional complexity, cost and operational challenges. Businesses need to evaluate their actual risks, service requirements and recovery targets before deciding how much redundancy is appropriate.
What the incident does—and does not—show
The outage demonstrates that cloud reliability is a shared responsibility involving providers and customers. Cloud providers must maintain infrastructure and communicate incidents, while customers need to design applications and continuity plans appropriate to the services they deliver.
The incident does not establish that all UK banks lost access to their systems, that customer funds disappeared or that the disruption was caused by a cyberattack. Such claims should not be made without direct confirmation.
