Data centres - coming soon to a community near you

News about data centres seems to be everywhere in recent weeks and months, reflecting a spectrum of views ranging from their absolute necessity as critical infrastructure to their inherent threats to our environment and wellbeing.

There are approximately 500 data centres in the UK, with growth projected at 20% over the next five years, driven by AI and cloud computing.

The Times reported last weekend that nearly 100 centres are currently going through planning applications in the UK, and most will be built in the next five years.More than half of the new centres are due to be in London and the home counties — many of them funded by US tech giants such as Google and Microsoft and leading investment firms. Nine are planned in Wales, five in Greater Manchester, one in Scotland and a handful elsewhere in the UK.

Unsurprisingly for a fast-growing industry driven by an even faster growing technology like AI, things continue to evolve, and there is much we still do not know. Attempts to generalise the impact of data centres tend to focus on national priorities like economic growth and international competitiveness, as outlined in the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan published earlier this year.

However, the sheer scale of data centre growth means that the opportunities and impacts of data centres are increasingly local. Recent updates to the Plan have designated certain parts of the UK as AI Growth Zones. The Government describes these as “pivotal” to delivering the vision of the AI Opportunities Action Plan and to “accelerating the buildout of our domestic data centres”. The Government update states

“AI Growth Zones will unlock large-scale compute capacity by creating locations where investment can happen quickly and confidently. These zones will tackle the biggest barriers to investment in AI data centres: slow and inconsistent planning processes and delays getting access to power”

And concludes

“By clustering investments, we ensure that every AI Growth Zone delivers for local people – building the workforce, driving adoption, and attracting investment that anchors AI growth in local economies.”

So there you have it -- data centres are coming to a locality near you. Is this an opportunity or a threat? Will it improve life for locals or potentially damage it? Most importantly, what do residents, businesses and other community stakeholders need to know about data centres so that they can meaningfully engage with local authorities and developers?

The first thing is to understand the scale, use and ownership of a proposed data centre. This will help to define the opportunities and threats it presents to a local community.

Data centres store, manage or process digital data at scale within secure, specialised, resilient and self-contained facilities. A data centre can be characterised as a building (or self contained unit within a building) that primarily houses computing equipment, plus telecommunications, network and storage systems. It is equipped with a guaranteed and resilient power supply and high bandwidth connectivity. It will have sophisticated security systems and building management controls to maintain required operating conditions for the equipment it houses.

Not all data centres are created equal – there are four types:

• Enterprise data centres: owned and operated by a single organisation for internal purposes.

• Co-location data centres: operated by a third party that rents space to customers.

• Hyperscale data centres: massive facilities built by major cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

• AI data centres: facilities specialised for the high-performance computing needs of AI development.

  
  

A data centre’s capacity is usually expressed as the maximum power it can draw, which determines how much equipment it can support to provide the “compute” required by users. The UK had approximately 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of data centre capacity in 2024. Preliminary analysis for the government found that UK data centre capacity could rise to between 3.3 GW and 6.3 GW by 2030.

So what are the potential threats of siting a data centre in your community?

1.   Energy usage 

Data centres are power-hungry, and this requires a consistent supply of electricity at high volumes. Although many data centres are exploring renewable energy options, most rely on power for the National Grid. The energy demand has multiple impacts on local communities – including electricity costs and availability, delays to housing and other infrastructure requirements, and sustainability.

Just this week The London Assembly Planning & Regeneration Committee published a report on data centres in London, citing the critical role electricity provision plays in London’s growth and sustainability and how this is challenged by the reliance data centres place on the grid. It stated

“As a result of this reliance, when the grid can’t keep pace with demand, the consequences are immediate. We’ve already seen in West London what happens when there is insufficient local energy planning. In 2022, due to a proliferation of data centres, housing developments were being told that they would have to wait until 2037 – a full 15 years – to get a grid connection. These delays don’t just slow local projects. They strike at the heart of London’s ambitions.”

2.   Water demand

Data centres can also place increasing demand on local water supplies to cool servers from the heat they generate. A recent report from TechUK showed that UK data centres found that 51% use waterless cooling and 64% use less than 10,000 m³ annually, which is similar to a leisure centre. However, some large facilities can consume millions of litres per day, and this usage is expected to increase significantly with AI growth.

3.   Health impact

In the US, where the number of data centres is 10x larger than the UK, there is growing concern about the health impact of data centres in the local areas where they are sited. Noise pollution, air pollution and drinking water contamination are top of the list. Increasingly stories appear in various media about health issues linked to data centres – the BBC has recently reported on threats to drinking water and noise pollution in American communities with data centres. A recent article in Science Direct recognises these health risks while at the same time citing a lack of evidence on long-term health effects and calling for empirical research:

“Empirical research is urgently needed to inform policy. Little is known about long-term health outcomes in data center host communities. Interdisciplinary studies should quantify pollution exposures (air, water, noise) and track associated health effects. Life-cycle assessments of data centers—from power generation to hardware disposal—can identify critical emission sources. Such evidence is vital to ensure that the digital revolution does not come at the expense of public health”

Data centres also present opportunities for local communities to consider.

1.   Investment, innovation & sustainability

Some of the challenges outlined above have led to innovative solutions that bring long term benefit to local communities. One area of innovation is transferring the excess heat generated by data centres into home and district heating systems.

The UK Power Networks’ SHIELD project has supported the development of HeatHub -- a small data centre containing more than 500 computers which generates heating for homes. Thermify, the company behind Heathub, describes it as a “radical new solution to replace gas boilers and generate new revenue from cloud computing.” A recent BBC report on HeatHub described how the system provides clean, green heat at a “low-to-no price point" because the electricity that's generating that heat is paid for by somebody else – eg Thermify clients using HeatHub to process their data.

On a larger scale heat transfer from data centres is beginning to be used to provide free heat for energy-intensive organisations like leisure centres. The Exmouth Leisure Centre in Devon currently heats its swimming pool with a data centre, provided free of charge to the Council.

According to Savills, the high water consumption required by data centres is actually driving innovation in water-saving techniques. In a recent report it outlines a range of these innovations, and concludes that as the data centre sector continues to grapple with sustainability targets and water scarcity, there are plenty of alternative cooling innovations to consider. 

2.   Community investment

A recent roundtable held by Stantec emphasised the growing need for community engagement in data centre development, highlighting cities and towns that have leveraged this to bring investment into their communities. It’s increasingly acknowledged that developers need to address specific matters of local importance to secure consent, according to Jones Day, who cite examples of localities that have benefited from data centre investment.

Hertsmere is one such example, where the developer agreed to pay £2 million towards improving local bus services through a section 106 planning agreement to gain their planning permission. Another example is Cambois, where operational shift working patterns at the data centres will be timed to avoid peak highway travel times, to address the requirements of the highway authority, and the section 106 obligations include an education, employment and training plan and a local supplier strategy. 

Data centres need to adopt a “Good Neighbour Policy”, says Arup, in a recent report on how data centres can strike a better balance between technology, community and nature. 

“We think this approach strengthens data centres’ social licence to operate, by bringing them into a dialogue with the community and giving them a role in local environment, biodiversity and socio-economic outcomes”

The report concludes

“the timing is right for this change. With artificial intelligence services exploding in popularity, leading to major increases in energy use, the data centre sector will need to be more publicly engaged and become more vocal about the value it brings” 

As local authorities and community groups get to grips with the challenges and opportunities data centres present to their locality, the very nature of “compute” and the demands for it are advancing at an eye-watering pace. The next frontier for siting data centres is not going to be the town next to yours, or even the nearby country competing for investment. In fact it’s not anywhere on earth. The next generation of data centres will be in space, according to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.  

In a recent interview with Fortune, Pichai “we’re just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centres.”  He described how Google will take its first steps in constructing extraterrestrial data centers in early 2027, adding that space-based data centers will be the new standard in the near future.

“There’s no doubt to me that a decade or so away we’ll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers,” he said. 

Clare Delmar

Listen to Locals

8 December 2025