What are datacentres doing to the places we love? In Slough, I found a bleak answer | John Harris
The Guardian's John Harris visited Slough, home to Europe's densest cluster of datacentres, to examine the impact of the UK's datacentre boom on local communities as the government pushes to triple the number of such facilities nationwide. His reporting finds that residents near the estate, once famous as the setting for The Office, associate the sprawling server farms with rising local heat and heavy water use, concerns that sharpen amid the UK's ongoing drought and record summer temperatures, and that are compounded by fears the sites could squeeze out land needed for new housing.
Slough Trading Estate now hosts around 40 datacentres, including one run by California-based Equinix, alongside older businesses, with more facilities planned. Locals, including residents of the postwar Britwell estate, reported noticeable night-time noise and a sense of increased heat since the centres proliferated; a preprint study by Cambridge University researchers suggested datacentres can create a "heat island" effect, raising nearby temperatures by an average of 2C and up to 9C, though the estate's owners say they have seen no conclusive evidence linking their operations to local temperature rises.
- Slough has Western Europe's densest datacentre cluster, around 40 sites.
- Locals report increased noise and heat since datacentres expanded nearby.
- Cambridge research links datacentres to a "heat island" effect of up to 9C.
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Datacentres are large warehouses full of computer servers that store data and power everything from streaming services to artificial intelligence. Demand for them has surged in recent years, driven largely by AI, and the UK government wants to see the number of these facilities roughly triple as part of its push to grow the digital economy. Slough, a town west of London best known as the setting for the sitcom The Office, has become an unlikely focal point in this expansion, with around 40 datacentres now clustered on its trading estate.
The rapid growth has raised questions about the toll these facilities take on the areas around them. Datacentres require huge amounts of electricity to run and water to keep their servers cool, and some residents living nearby believe this is making their neighbourhoods hotter and noisier, particularly at night. These concerns have taken on extra weight this year because of an ongoing drought and record-breaking summer temperatures across the UK, alongside worries that land earmarked for datacentres could otherwise be used to build much-needed housing.
The debate touches on a wider tension in modern Britain: how to balance the economic benefits of the tech industry, including jobs and investment, against the strain that its physical infrastructure can place on local communities, resources and the environment.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates for the datacentre expansion would argue that Britain's digital economy, public services and ambitions in AI depend on this infrastructure, and that datacentres bring investment, construction and operational jobs, and business rates to areas like Slough that have long relied on such industrial estates. They would point out that the alternative to building capacity domestically is simply exporting that growth and its associated jobs to other countries, while operators are increasingly investing in cooling technologies and efficiency measures to reduce water and energy use over time. They would also stress that national infrastructure decisions inevitably involve trade-offs, and that a competent planning system can manage local impacts while still delivering capacity the wider economy needs.
The case against
Residents and their advocates would argue that communities should not have to bear disproportionate local costs, such as heat, noise and strain on water supplies, especially during a drought, for infrastructure whose benefits are diffuse and largely accrue elsewhere. They would emphasise that housing is desperately needed and that land given over to server farms is land not used to address a acute local housing shortage. They would also argue that the evidence base on heat and water impacts is still emerging, and that precaution and robust local consultation should guide further expansion rather than treating datacentre growth as an inevitability to be accommodated after the fact.