The Data Centre Dilemma: How AI's Hunger for Power Is Reshaping British Towns
The UK government wants three times as many data centres. In Slough, locals are already living next to metal-clad giants that drink water and burn electricity at a scale that rivals whole neighbourhoods.
Key points
- The UK government plans to triple the number of data centres in Britain to support growing demand from artificial intelligence.
- Data centres, the large warehouse-like buildings that house the computers powering AI and the internet, require enormous amounts of electricity and water to run.
- Slough, a town roughly 20 miles west of London, already hosts one of the densest concentrations of data centres in Europe.
- Critics argue that land and power needed for new data centres could otherwise support housing developments and local water supplies.
- Europe's energy and water pressures, sharpened by hotter summers, make the expansion debate increasingly urgent.
Slough on a Monday morning in a heatwave looks like two towns sharing one postcode. There are the familiar high-street businesses, a car-repair garage here, a fishing-tackle shop there. Then, looming over them, are buildings the size of aircraft hangars clad in grey and silver metal, their cooling fans humming loudly enough to hear from the pavement.
Those giant buildings are data centres: vast warehouses packed floor to ceiling with computer servers, the machines that store and process almost everything we do online. Every time you stream a film, send an email, or ask an AI chatbot a question, a server somewhere does the work. The AI boom has sent demand for server space soaring, because the models behind tools like ChatGPT need far more computing power than a standard website ever did.
Why does this matter to ordinary people?
Because data centres need two things in huge quantities: electricity and water. The electricity keeps the computers running. The water cools them down, preventing the machines from overheating.
A single large data centre can use as much electricity as a small town. Water consumption runs to millions of litres a year at busy sites. When a new data centre moves into an area, it competes for the same grid connections and reservoir supplies that homes, hospitals and schools also depend on.
The Guardian first reported on the community tensions building around Slough's trading estate, where residents and planners are asking a simple question: if the power and land go to servers, what is left for people?
What is the government proposing?
Whitehall, the part of the British civil service that advises ministers, wants to triple the UK's total number of data centres. The goal is to make Britain a leading destination for technology investment and to ensure the country has enough computing capacity to keep pace with the United States and China in the global AI race.
Supporting that ambition is not a small ask. Tripling data centres means tripling the land, the grid upgrades and the water connections they require.
| What a large data centre needs | Rough scale |
|---|---|
| Electricity per year | Enough for 50,000 homes |
| Water per year | Millions of litres for cooling |
| Land footprint | Often 10 to 30 acres per campus |
| Planning approval time | Typically 2 to 5 years |
| Lifespan before major upgrade | 10 to 20 years |
What happens next?
The tension will not resolve itself quietly. Local councils, energy network operators and water companies all face the same pressure: more demand, fixed infrastructure, and summers that keep getting hotter.
For anyone living near a proposed data centre site, that means attending planning consultations and asking direct questions about water use and grid capacity. For the rest of us, it means accepting that the AI tools we use daily have a physical footprint somewhere, and someone nearby is living with it.
Common questions
Can data centres be made greener?
Can data centres reduce their water use?
Some operators are switching from water-based cooling to air cooling or experimenting with recycled water, but neither approach fully solves the problem at the scale governments are planning.
Will this affect my electricity bills?
More demand on the national grid can push prices up, though the effect depends on how quickly the grid adds new renewable generation to keep pace.
