A technical fault at Google Cloud's Europe-West2 data centre in London has led to noticeable disruptions to digital services across the United Kingdom. A power outage at the facility had immediate consequences for the accessibility of major online services. Alongside the UK's leading property portal Rightmove, several of the country's major banks were directly affected by the IT issues.
On the Rightmove platform, the disruption primarily affected areas requiring a login. Registered users and estate agents attempting to access personalised accounts, saved searches or stored property listings faced temporary error messages. Administrative functions for agency offices were also temporarily blocked by the cloud infrastructure failure.
Significant disruptions in the British banking sector
Alongside the issues on the property portal, the infrastructure outage caused operational constraints at several prominent financial institutions. The affected institutions included both traditional banking groups and digital financial service providers:
- —Lloyds and Halifax recorded disruptions to digital transactions and online banking.
- —The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HSBC reported outages in their online systems.
- —Fintech firm Revolut also experienced disruptions to its ongoing operations.
Vulnerability of digital transaction chains
The incident highlights the close connection between modern property and financial markets and centralised IT service providers. Because wide-reaching platforms such as Rightmove and major mortgage and financing partners such as Lloyds, HSBC or RBS rely on the same data centres, local power outages quickly lead to extensive disruptions of digital processes.
For the real estate sector, this event underlines the importance of robust contingency plans and redundant server structures. When interfaces between property seekers, estate agents and lending institutions fail, deal origination and completion processes across the market immediately grind to a halt.
