Been noticing this for a while actually. The one in Manchester last spring happened literally two days before that infrastructure announcement and nobody really picked up on it. Could be coincidence but it keeps happening enough that I started keeping a rough log of dates.
My main question is whether anyone has found a reliable way to cross-reference outage reports with official announcement schedules? Like is there a database or archive somewhere that tracks both in a way that lets you actually compare them properly? I've been trying to do it manually and its just too messy.
Also wondering if its specific to the UK or if people in other countries are seeing the same pattern, because if it's cross-national that changes things quite a bit in terms of what the explanation might be.