London still dominates Britain's datacenter map, but the regions are powering up
The capital holds two-thirds of capacity, while multimegawatt projects gather beyond the M25
A recent analysis reveals that London still holds a dominant position in Britain's datacenter landscape, accounting for nearly 40% of the country's facilities and two-thirds of its colocation capacity. Despite this, development is expanding beyond the capital. The study, compiled by Karas Plating, identifies 555 UK server farms with a combined IT capacity of about 1.6 GW.
London leads with 219 active facilities, representing 40% of the total and 1,048 MW, or two-thirds of the nation's datacenter compute capacity. The capital is also the hub for future growth, with 15 planned expansion projects. However, there's a noticeable shift towards high-capacity regional infrastructure, driven by factors such as power shortages and planning constraints.
South East England, for instance, hosts 62 current facilities with 128 MW capacity and ten new developments on the horizon. North West England has 39 active sites and five upcoming builds, making it the region with the most planned projects outside London and the South East. The East of England and Scotland also have notable datacenter presence, with 45 and 49 operational facilities, respectively.
Wales and the South West, while having fewer current facilities, show potential with future projects, including OpenAI's Stargate datacenter plans in North Tyneside.
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