Google Cloud Power Incident in London Zone Disrupts UK Bank Payments, Remote Court Hearings

What happened

At around 7:00 BST on Tuesday, Oct 20, Google Cloud's europe-west2-b availability zone in London reported a power incident. Computer Weekly reported that backup generators on site failed to kick in; the outage peaked around 9:00, most services recovered around midday, and Google said in a 15:00 BST update that the impact had been mitigated for most customers.

Google described the event as a power incident at a third-party facility in London, said services had been restored, and promised to publish a post-incident analysis on its public status dashboard. The same zone suffered a cooling failure in July 2022.

Key facts

1. Revolut: confirmed logins, card payments, ATM withdrawals and transfers were all affected, covering its 13 million UK customers; the company stressed customer funds and data remained secure.
2. More banks: Users reported outages at Lloyds, Halifax, HSBC and Bank of Scotland on Downdetector; Reuters said the banks did not respond to requests for comment.
3. Judiciary: The UK Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) remote video hearing platform malfunctioned, affecting some hearings.
4. Other services: The NHS app, Royal Mail, DPD and Rightmove were also reported affected, though some reports come only from user submissions without official confirmation.
5. Regulators step in: The European Banking Authority has written to Google over the incident; the UK Prime Minister's office confirmed it is in contact with Google.