Call to Pull the Plug on London Data Centre Building

We call on Mayor Sadiq Khan to request an immediate moratorium on the construction of new data centres in London, until the people have held a Citizens' Assembly on data centres.

Planning regulation allows data centres to be fast tracked, citing national significance or position within AI Growth Zones, and leapfrogging past local decision-makers and residents.

The public must be heard.

Scale of the issue

The UK government aims to become the third-largest provider of AI infrastructure in the world, with plans to build over 100 new data centres to supplement the more than 500 already in operation. These projects are being fast-tracked as “strategically important” under Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) designation.

The majority of the UK's data centres will be built in and around London and neighbouring counties. Many are privately funded by US tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft, and major investment firms. The British public has not been consulted on the new buildings.

Impact on the housing crisis

The designation allows data centres to jump the planning queue ahead of housing, hospitals, and industrial developments that communities need. We call on the government to prioritise building new homes for Londoners rather than data centres for unsustainable AI models.

The environment

Data centres are profoundly environmentally damaging. They demand huge amounts of electricity and temporarily non-renewable water. A study suggests a 1-megawatt data centre uses enough electricity to power 1000 houses and 25.5 million litres of water. Projections suggest that, by 2030, global data centres will use more electricity than the entirety of Japan.

Cost of living

New data centres contribute to ever-growing demands on our energy supply and consumers foot the bill. Water and electricity become more expensive due to energy consumption from data centres. Planning documents suggest that 28 of the new data centres would be serviced by troubled Thames Water, often in areas already classified as 'water stressed'.

Data centres force expensive grid upgrades, as we've seen in London, and the consumer often foots the bill. AI drastically increases energy and water demand, which means it costs more for other uses. The costs of data centres are nationalised, the rewards privatised.

The Citizens' Assembly

Data centres do not build homes. They do not staff hospitals. They create a relentless demand on the energy grid and on water supplies. The government should prioritise the needs of people over Big Tech and pause the building of London data centres.