UK data centre plans demand sevenfold increase in delivery

The UK must deliver new data centre capacity at seven times its recent rate to meet developers’ plans by the start of the next decade, a report has warned.

Developers plan to add 5.7GW of UK data centre capacity between 2026 and 2030, according to think tank Science Works.

Chancellor John Healey pledged in Wednesday’s Budget to “ensure the UK has the data centres, energy connections, advanced chips and digital infrastructure needed to support national resilience and the development and adoption of artificial intelligence”.

The government announced a Data Centre Covenant setting expectations for community benefits and environmental protection, alongside a Ministerial Control Centre to consider support for strategic projects.

Science Works said the UK would need to outpace historical EU and US expansion rates to meet developers’ ambitions. Britain’s data centre capacity has increased by an average of 11 per cent a year over the past decade, compared with 13 per cent in Europe and 19 per cent in America. The report said the UK had the greatest proportional increase in planned delivery and warned that “something significant will need to change”.

Just 13 per cent of additional data centre capacity planned for 2026 to 2030 was under construction as of September, Science Works added.

Double that proportion has full development consent but construction has yet to begin, while more than half of the pipeline is working its way through the planning system.

“Because the planning files are scattered across more than 100 independent council portals, as far as we know, no one is systematically tracking the real-world planning and delivery status of these projects,” the think tank said.

“Broader use of local development orders or the new nationally significant infrastructure project route could help reduce both the delay and the uncertainty, helping developers accelerate the build-out.”

The report estimated that London and the South East’s share of UK data centre capacity would fall from 73 per cent in 2025 to 53 per cent in 2030 if projects were delivered as planned.

No other region would exceed a tenth of the total, with the East of England and Yorkshire and the Humber coming closest at 9 per cent.

An analysis by Barbour ABI for Construction News, published in August, identified more than £100bn of proposed UK data centre construction, with more than a third by value holding outline or detailed planning permission but not yet on site.