Knowledge centre planning purposes hit a file excessive throughout England and Wales in 2025, as builders and buyers raced to safe websites amid rising demand for AI and cloud compute.
That’s in accordance with new analysis from City AM, which famous that greater than 60 planning purposes for brand new knowledge centres had been submitted in England and Wales throughout 2025. That represents a 63% improve in contrast with 2024.
It shouldn’t come as an excessive amount of of a shock that there was a surge in knowledge centre planning purposes, particularly because the trade splashes the money as huge tech fights over who might be primary within the AI race. Companies akin to Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are all committing enormous capex budgets to increasing their knowledge centre portfolio, and the UK is seen as a key goal for brand new knowledge centres.
What may very well be a shock, nevertheless, is the truth that all the brand new purposes cited by Metropolis AM had been for brand new knowledge centre developments and excluded extensions to current websites, revisions to previous purposes, and wider mixed-use schemes that included a knowledge centre element. Which means the true quantity of knowledge centre-related proposals transferring via the planning system is more likely to be increased.
Dame Daybreak Childs, Chief Govt of Pure Knowledge Centres, instructed Metropolis AM, “With this AI bubble that everybody’s speaking about…due to the elevated valuations for powered land, everybody’s making an attempt to get a chunk of the pie, and that creates a bunch of fizziness.
“We’re seeing a lot of people who find themselves sending out each day: ‘we’ve acquired this important plot of land with all of those megawatts of energy in the midst of nowhere, it’ll be an AI gigafactory, purchase it for a gazillion kilos’ – they’re completely making an attempt to get elevated valuations for scrappy industrial land.”
Childs stated the strongest demand is being pushed by AI-related purposes from main hyperscalers, whereas including that even with out AI, the UK would doubtless have seen a notable rise in exercise as cloud adoption accelerates throughout the broader economic system.
Geographically, the South East continues to dominate. Round half of the purposes had been positioned in London and the South East – areas already seen as a European hotspot for knowledge centre capability due to connectivity, buyer proximity, and established infrastructure.
That stated, the evaluation factors to a broader unfold of proposals past the standard hubs. Seven purposes had been submitted in Wales through the 12 months, together with one other seven within the East Midlands, 4 within the North West and 4 in Yorkshire, suggesting builders are more and more wanting additional afield as land and energy constraints chew within the South East.
It’s not simply the variety of purposes that’s altering — it’s the kind of websites being focused. Builders seem like getting extra inventive, with proposals to repurpose a variety of current brownfield property into knowledge centres. The examples cited within the evaluation embrace an deserted Mercure lodge web site in Watford, the previous Truman brewery earmarked for conversion in Hackney, a shuttered coal mine in Nottinghamshire, and a former landfill web site in Chesterfield.
Given the demand for energy many trendy knowledge centres now have, previous energy stations are additionally proving standard websites for hyperscalers. In reality, it was not too long ago revealed that Amazon was prepping a brand-new knowledge centre on the location of the previous Didcot A knowledge centre in Oxfordshire. Now plainly undertaking is simply one of many many presently battling their manner via the UK’s planning system.
