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Email us →UK and Ireland data-centre siting, power, cooling and water intelligence.
Seven volumes on this sector, every figure traced to a named primary source and carried at a stated verification date. We read DSIT, the Environment Agency, NESO, Ofgem and the GLA so that you do not have to. Scroll down to see what is in them.
There is no middle path.
Power was always the constraint. Now water is.
The thermal envelope, grid headroom, the water framework, the planning route and the offtake — read from the source and dated.
Every one traced back to the publication it came from, with a confidence level attached.
Check grid headroom before you shortlist a site, not after you have paid for the option.
Track the five AI Growth Zones against what has actually been consented in each one.
See which planning route a scheme is taking — CNI, grey belt or NSIP — and how long each has taken.
Read how hyperscale offtake is financing UK renewables, and what that means for your power price.
A data centre is a building full of computer servers that needs a large, constant electricity supply and a way to carry the heat away. With so many now going up for artificial intelligence, finding the power and cooling is most of the work of choosing your site. Expect closer government attention too, because data centres have counted as critical national infrastructure since 12 September 2024.
Start with the grid connection queue, because a connection date is worth more than planning permission and without one a site goes nowhere. Ofgem said on 29 July 2026 that around 315 data centre projects in the queue account for about 73 GW of demand (gigawatts, a measure of how much power they would draw at once). Across every kind of demand, including data centres, the total held by projects with connection agreements rose from 41 GW in November 2024 to 125 GW in June 2025.
Treat that queue with care. Ofgem itself says many of the data centre projects in it are speculative.
Look at the five AI Growth Zones to see where the government wants the biggest data centres to go. Culham in Oxfordshire was named first, in January 2025, followed by the North East, North Wales, South Wales and, on 29 January 2026, Lanarkshire.
If your scheme is large, you can now ask for it to be decided by ministers rather than the local council, under the system for nationally important projects, which has been open to data centres since January 2026. The government published its draft national policy statement, the rulebook for that route, on 28 October 2026. It proposes the route for schemes of at least 100 megawatts (MW) of rated IT load, which is the most power the computer equipment can be supplied with.
| Figure | What it is | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| 73 GW | Data centre demand in Britain's grid connection queue, across about 315 projects | Ofgem, 29 July 2026 |
| 5 | AI Growth Zones named so far, from Culham to Lanarkshire | GOV.UK, 29 January 2026 |
| 100 MW | The suggested minimum rated IT load for a data centre to go through the national planning route | Draft national policy statement for data centres, 28 October 2026 |
Put two dates in your diary. The consultation on the draft national policy statement closes on 8 January 2027, and Parliament's scrutiny of it ends on 17 February 2027. If you are planning anything of 100 MW or more in England, read the draft now.
Follow Ofgem's connection reforms too. Its July proposals aim to clear speculative projects out of the queue, and Ofgem says they are about "ensuring viable projects are able to progress as quickly as possible to connection".
Read the latest data centre news in The Wire below, with a link to each source. Open any project on our map to see when we last checked it. The lists below include Irish projects, which our Ireland volumes cover separately.
Not sure which of our reports you need? Email book@gridteamai.com and we'll point you to the right one. Figures checked 9 November 2026.
The 7 reports in this sector cover the named UK clusters, the build-out gap, the consenting and grid-connection reality, and the supplier positioning behind it.
Watch this sector live on the boards — the Heatmap for its projects, the Data Board for its targets against delivery.
Open any volume and you get consultancy-grade depth: twelve findings, headline figures, the Director’s Six-Check, a glossary of named entities, and twelve named UK suppliers per category. deep report PDF + two-page Crib Sheet + quarterly Currency Addendum.
£295 single volume · from £99 a month, or £995 a year: one named reader — the full multi-volume catalogue, every new volume released during the year, and the 120 Safety Moments. Team £2,495/yr (up to 10 named readers) · Enterprise £4,995/yr (whole company, up to 250 employees) · Corporate £9,995/yr (above 250 employees).
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