Data centres present a multi-dimensional resilience challenge. Not only does the UK need to keep this newly defined class of critical national infrastructure secure from both physical and cyber threats, it must build enough capacity to allow the economy to grow—but not too much so that it threatens to overwhelm our natural resources. And, finally, the nation requires that the data centre facilities themselves operate effectively to house the sovereign data that powers our public services and commercial enterprises.
It is those three dimensions that underscore an ongoing public debate, one that’s often lively and sometimes fractious. And it is those dimensions that set the scene for this roundtable discussion, the last in Prospect’s Resilience Series looking at ways to strengthen the nation’s core infrastructure.
Data centres have moved from being a topic of specialist interest to one that is central to our national and societal thinking. Demand is growing due to the expansion of cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. And that means for the industry and policymakers alike, data centres should increasingly be seen as part of a wider ecosystem that includes energy, water, transport, telecoms, planning, and communities. And, the industry argues, the real question isn’t how many data centres the UK needs; it’s how we build the right digital infrastructure in the right places to strengthen economic growth, support communities and improve national resilience.
The aim may be laudable but tensions exist. Public sentiment—as mediated through social and mainstream media, at least—suggests anxieties about planning and resource usage. MPs, too, report community misgivings. The industry, for its part, believes many of the concerns have been misdiagnosed, a product of some inaccurate reporting and, in one instance, of the unintended consequences of government policy. The latter is a nod to AI Growth Zones, introduced in 2025 and which resulted in an extraordinary influx of applications to build new data centres, some of them feasible but many fanciful.
The inaccuracies, meanwhile, focus predominantly on the use—and potential overuse—of natural resources, energy and water in particular. Here again, the industry believes reality is not reflected in the stories told. Debates about resource use matter, noted one speaker, not least because “every discussion we have in parliament around growth and planning is conducted within a mindset of scarcity.”
Many of those at the roundtable insisted that increased energy use needs to be put in perspective. They cited research by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This found that data centres will account for around one-tenth of global electricity demand growth through to 2030, less than the share from industrial motors, air conditioning in homes and offices, or electric vehicles. Others point out that given the relatively high cost of power in the UK, energy-intensive and “location-agnostic” projects such as training AI models are likely to be located elsewhere.
The real question isn’t how many data centres the UK needs. It’s how we build the right digital infrastructure in the right places
On water use, again the industry argues that the scare stories are without foundation. According to a study by TechUK, data centres in England account for just 0.2 per cent of England’s non-household water use. That’s less than the total amount lost by water companies through leakage every single day. In addition, data centres often deploy closed-loop cooling systems that use unpotable water and only need to be filled up once.
Some put these misconceptions down to narratives that come straight from the United States without any acknowledgment that UK circumstances are completely different. Additionally, they point to opinion polling from Public First which suggests a more nuanced public position. It found that 36 per cent support data centre building against 19 per cent who oppose. (Support is highest among younger adults, peaking at 54 per cent among 25- to 34-year-olds).
Another area of tension is where to place new data centres. The government wants them to act as a catalyst for growth across the nation’s regions. Data centres, however, tend to have their own centre of gravity, one that skews (if not exclusively) towards London and the south-east. Here, heavy users such as financial services and retailers operate at scale. “Customers generally want to be in areas where other customers are,” noted one speaker. To that end, Slough has emerged as the second largest data centre campus in the world, supporting around 14,000 jobs. “It’s revitalised a tired old industrial estate and the government should have used it as an example of what AI and data centres can do.”
When it comes to the resilience of the customer data that these centres house, cyber resilience and sovereignty emerge as the most material challenges. On the former, one provider represented around the table observed that the systems her organisation manages are subject to over 600 million attempted cyberattacks per day, globally. Paradoxically, such volumes of attack are a source of valuable insights “that can be used to bolster the resilience of businesses and the public sector across the UK”.
On the desire for sovereignty, some regulated industries are obligated to maintain the bulk of the information they hold within the UK while others choose to do so. Sovereignty (or “meaningful control of the technology stack”, in the words of one speaker) helps drive the local data centre industry and offers the UK a potential point of differentiation. In the words of another speaker, the UK should pitch itself as somewhere between the overcontrol of the European Union and the “wild west” of the US.
The challenge of hostile public sentiment remains and for some, data centres have become “a proxy for a wider conversation around the extent to which computers are in our lives.” One way to take the heat out of the debate and to allow for fact-based decision making is to launch a citizen assembly, suggested one speaker. Citizen assemblies consist of a panel of ordinary people who are invited to review briefing materials from all those with a stake in an issue. They hear from expert witnesses and are able to ask questions to understand the facts.
“The whole point of citizens’ panels,” this speaker explained, “is to allow people to actually start digging down into the details and get past the first 20 minutes of any argument where everyone is saying, ‘This is going to be bad’.”
‘Data Centres and Britain’s Resilience’, part of Prospect’s Resilience Series and jointly hosted by Arup, took place on Wednesday 2nd September 2026
