It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. For those involved in the ever-evolving world of digital innovation, the old adage continues to prove especially prescient.
As more businesses embrace data to drive operational efficiency and productivity, so more and more are outgrowing their in-house connectivity and servers. Cue the rise of data centres: standalone, high-power hubs which service complex digital, information storage and cyber security requirements for many businesses, as well as the cloud platforms we rely on every day.
Here in London, the city’s data centre network is growing apace. In the Borough of Newham, to take just one example, our members Legal & General and Arup are working alongside Goldacre to channel £500m into a major data centre project. In doing so, they’re not only growing the advanced digital capacity the capital urgently needs, they’re also supporting job creation and local regeneration.
As artificial intelligence and wider digital advances continue to reshape the world of work, the need for this kind of investment will grow exponentially in the coming years. Across the capital, the question of how and where to sustainably build these data centres is an ever more pressing one.
We recently brought together BusinessLDN members to discuss the future of data centres alongside Eversheds Sutherland, for a senior business leaders dinner hosted at their offices at Wood Street. The need for planning reform to support digital investment was front of mind for many. The Government has now set down a marker in this regard, with its revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) being explicit about the need for strategies developed by local planning authorities to support investment in data centres. The updated NPPF encourages the use of local development orders to make suitable investment happen.
The Government has also recently relaxed the rules around Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects for data centres in the UK – companies looking to build new data centres are now able to apply for classification as NSIPs — meaning projects will receive an expedited planning process overseen by the UK government.
Also, last month, the Deputy Prime Minister called in and approved a significant data centre project a few miles outside of London which had been blocked at the local level. Whilst beyond the M25 there is more space for such developments, the challenge in London is increasing digital capacity when space is at a significant premium.
When I spoke with Ian Cottingham of BT Wholesale for the latest episode of our What Next for London? podcast, he stressed the importance of developing “edge” data centres – smaller hubs, typically “around two to three Tesco metros in size”, which can be positioned in cities, close to the businesses which need them. The benefits of these more localised centres include reduced “latency” – the time it takes for data to travel across networks – and lower power requirements due to increased proximity.
With the UK’s data centre network now consuming 4% of the country’s total power supply, sustainability considerations continue to grow in importance. In the capital, our members Queen Mary University are leading the way in reusing waste heat from data centres to reduce their carbon footprint. This underlines the potential to create a more sustainable and interconnected system if we can more effectively join the dots between planning, investment and skills to build the data centres that London and the UK need.
As demand for cutting edge infrastructure increasingly outstrips supply, policymakers must make supporting digital investment a priority for the year ahead. Proposals for ‘AI Growth Zones’ contained in the Government’s new AI Opportunities Action Plan mark a welcome step forward in this regard.
At a local level, the Greater London Authority’s Chief Digital Officer Theo Blackwell recently explained to our members how digital infrastructure considerations have played a key role in development of City Hall’s new Growth Plan, set to be published in the coming weeks. We now hope to see the next iteration of the London Plan – which currently runs to more than 500 pages but mentions data centres just three times – streamlined in order to support inward investment.
More fundamentally, bringing together data centre providers, businesses and policymakers to map the sustainable expansion of London’s digital infrastructure is an essential precursor for success. That’s why we’ve established our gigabit connectivity working group, which convenes the capital’s digital decision-makers on a regular basis. Because whilst necessity is the mother of invention, it’s through collaboration across the public and private sectors that we can put that invention to best use.
For more information about our gigabit working group contact John Kavanagh.