Google resolves cloud outage affecting UK banks and websites

Google Cloud says services are recovering after a "power event" at its UK cloud site caused an outage affecting UK banks, businesses and the courts.

The company, one of a few large cloud computing firms whose infrastructure and services underpin many online platforms, reported an "issue with multiple services" at its London data centre complex "europe-west2."

Revolut, Lloyds Bank and HSBC confirmed disruption to some services on Tuesday morning, after thousands of reports of problems were raised by users online.

While the banks did not directly link the issues to the Google Cloud outage, the company has apologised "to all who are affected by the disruption".

A host of popular British platforms and services appeared to have been affected during Tuesday's outage - with customers flagging issues with sites including Royal Mail, DPD and e-bike service Forest.

The HM Courts and Tribunals Service also said it was aware of an issue affecting the video platform used for remote hearings.

Banks appeared to be among the most badly affected, with customers reporting problems ranging from being unable to access funds abroad to struggling to complete a property purchase.

Rachael Ellen, 25, a Revolut customer from Glasgow, told BBC News she was left unable to access her money.

"Today I was unable to pay for my parking at a shopping centre because my Revolut account wasn't working properly," she told the BBC.

"This left me in a difficult situation as I had no way to access the money I needed at the time."

She said the outage also meant she could not view a transaction from a relative and was told by the app's help bot that there were no pending incoming transactions.

"It's frustrating not knowing where the payment is or when I'll receive it," Rachael added.

More than 1,500 reports of issues affecting Revolut services were flagged to platform outage monitor shortly after 08:00 BST on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the company later confirmed its problems had been caused by a third-party issue but pointed out that "all our customers' money and data are safe."

"We've been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused," they said.

Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland - all owned by the Lloyds Banking Group - also reported issues affecting some online banking services.

A Lloyds spokesperson did not confirm the cause of issues affecting some of its services, but told the BBC later on Tuesday "we understand the root issues have been resolved, so we expect all our services to be back to normal soon."

In an update on service health dashboard on Tuesday afternoon that the issues it was dealing with had been "mitigated for most of the customers" and only a small number were believed to be still affected.

The company said it would publish an analysis of the incident once it had completed an internal investigation, and thanked customers for their patience.

Tuesday's incident came exactly one year after more than 1,000 sites, including UK banks, were knocked offline for hours during an outage at Amazon Web Service's largest cloud site.

Experts say this latest outage show how many businesses still rely on core services provided by a few large cloud operators.

"Google Cloud's outage is a reminder of how deeply our economies depend on just a handful of cloud providers," said Prof Feng Li, associate dean for research & innovation at Bayes Business School.

He added that it was not yet clear what caused the power problem identified by Google Cloud.

"Large cloud systems are complex, and failures will happen.

"What matters is how far they spread, how quickly services recover and whether customers have workable alternatives," he added.