The Foundations of the Future report commissioned by techUK, and developed by Henham Strategy, makes for incredible reading.
As a sector, the UK data centre industry is worth £4.7 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) annually, supporting 43,500 jobs and contributing £640 million in revenue to the exchequer. When you consider that this has happened in less than 35 years, this is remarkable.
And the future is set to eclipse the past: the report proposes that if the sector can exceed current growth rates of around 10% and hit 15% a year, it could unlock an additional £44 billion additional GVA between 2025-35.
Based on current demand patterns, most people in the industry would see such figures as feasible.
But – to take a moment of pragmatism – there is a very real danger that this incredible opportunity will be concentrated, if not restricted within the ‘traditional’ datacentre geography of London, Berkshire, and Surrey.
This would be a catastrophic mistake.
It is vital to expand beyond the capital if we are to accelerate and maximise the impact and contribution that data centres can make.
This is not just a case of ensuring economic prosperity is spread throughout the country (although that in itself, is reason enough). The industry benefits from looking beyond the M25.
When it comes to both power and sustainability, the climate in Scotland can help reduce demand for energy used in cooling facilities. The North West has extensive estates of existing sites that can be adapted for DC use. And the Midlands is home to some of the best technology and data skills courses in the UK.
There are also legitimate concerns around the capacity in London - colocation data centre take-up in London in 2024 is expected to challenge the record of 139MW set in 2022 - and updating facilities for the likes of AI is prohibitively expensive and risks huge disruption.
Our entire business is built on expanding the opportunity afforded by data centres, across the entire UK. Our twelve facilities are connected by a private, high-speed, resilient network to create the most geographically diverse digital infrastructure in the UK. The objective is low-latency connectivity to all major metros in the UK.
As a result, we have had front row seats to the explosion of interest in areas such as Newcastle, Manchester, and Edinburgh. But equally, we see the need for development across the South West and elsewhere.
This call for truly nation-wide thinking is nothing new. As far back as 2020, techUK analysis of the UK data centre sector identified that each new data centre contributes between £397 million and £436 million (GVA) per year to the economy. The same report found that existing data centres contributed between £291 million and £320 million p.a.
If the UK (not just its capital) is going to retain its leadership of the European data centre industry and capitalise – sustainably - on the growth techUK has forecast, it is time to go regional.
