{"id":635967,"date":"2026-09-25T20:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T20:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/635967\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T20:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T20:46:12","slug":"the-town-carrying-britains-ai-dream-is-starting-to-revolt-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/635967\/","title":{"rendered":"The town carrying Britain\u2019s AI dream is starting to revolt \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comedian Ricky Gervais<\/a> was typically astringent in his Mortality television special last year when he addressed the dangers posed to the human race by artificial intelligence: \u201cI\u2019ll say this about AI<\/a>: If it starts becoming a burden, switch it off … like we did Nan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities in Slough, where Gervais set his career-defining series The Office, want to do the opposite. The Berkshire town west of London plans to cash in on the global AI-fuelled boom in data centres<\/a>, sparking a building sector gold rush to construct new facilities.<\/p>\n

Slough was already home to the world\u2019s second-largest cluster of data centres, drawn there over the past 20 years by fast-track council planning rules.<\/p>\n

The town, close to Heathrow airport and the M4 motorway, also sits directly on top of the internet fibre optic cables that run across the Atlantic from the US, over Ireland and, from there, on to London via Wales and, eventually, mainland Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlough is strategically one of the most important areas in the world,\u201d James Tyler, UK managing director of data centres giant Equinix told BBC earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Yet a local backlash is brewing.<\/p>\n

\"AA boarded shopfront, formerly a Debenhams store, in Slough’s drab retail core. Photograph: Mark Paul <\/p>\n

Residents worry about noise from the facilities and their demand for electricity and water, as well as fears that data centres may locally exacerbate heatwaves. They also complain about them crowding out new housing.<\/p>\n

A petition before the council organised by local campaign group Slough Against Data Centres refers to the town\u2019s status as a world hub for the facilities, second only to Ashburn, Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has Slough gained in return?\u201d campaigners asked.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018We just don\u2019t want them\u2019: Hundreds gather in a Kildare town over data centre plansOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The Berkshire town\u2019s centre this week seemed blighted by signs of urban decay such as shuttered shopping centres. Away from the depressed centre, however, there was fresh development. Data centres have brought 14,000 jobs. Yet some locals are unhappy.<\/p>\n

Slough, the campaigners said, \u201cshould not be an experiment\u201d for the global AI boom.<\/p>\n

It is a tune increasingly being heard across Britain, where the Labour government, hungry for investment to spur economic growth, plans to triple data centre output by 2030. It has designated them \u201ccritical national infrastructure\u201d to bypass planning rules.<\/p>\n

Opposition is emerging to new data centres in London, where housing secretary Angela Rayner is under fire for recently waving one through one near the Bengali culture hub Brick Lane, and elsewhere in England as development radiates out from Slough into rural shires.<\/p>\n

There is also opposition brewing in Wales and, most recently, Scotland, where the parliament in Holyrood this month voted to delay for at least a year while planning rules are reviewed several so-called \u201chyperscale\u201d data centres designed to \u201ctrain\u201d new AI.<\/p>\n

\"AA protester holds anti-AI placards outside OpenAI offices in King’s Cross, London. Photograph: Vuk Valcic\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images) \"PeoplePeople hold placards during a “emergency protest” by civic action group PauseAI UK outside Downing Street in London. Photograph: Justin Tallis\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can all at least take a breath now,\u201d said Katherine Jones, a campaigner against big data centres in rural Scotland, as she welcomed the pause decision there.<\/p>\n

There is no sign yet, however, of any pause in Slough, where this week data centre development appeared to be full steam ahead.<\/p>\n

The town is probably better known as an anti-cultural metaphor, the punchline of a thousand jokes about supposed dreariness in suburban Britain.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Premier Inn on the site of the building used for Ricky Gervais’s The Office. Photograph: Mark Paul <\/p>\n

Gervais\u2019s cringey David Brent character in The Office worked at boring paper company Wernham Hogg. The building on the Slough Trading Estate (STE) that was the site of the fictional company\u2019s headquarters has since been knocked down, replaced with a shiny new Premier Inn hotel. The only evidence of Brent this week was a bust of the character in the hotel\u2019s lobby, unveiled this summer for the 25th anniversary of The Office.<\/p>\n

All around Gervais\u2019s nondescript former stomping ground, however, was evidence of Slough\u2019s AI-fuelled data centre boom. The trading estate is the hotspot. Building cranes are everywhere.<\/p>\n

The hotel sits off Buckingham Avenue, which is Europe\u2019s \u201cdata centre alley\u201d. Along this road which is the backbone of the STE\u2019s streets, as well as streets branching off to the north and south, sit scores of huge data centres servicing tech giants such as Amazon and Google.<\/p>\n

There are at least 500 data centres in Britain. Almost one in 10 are in Slough Trading Estate, which is owned by a stock market-listed company that boasts of a \u00a3200 million (\u20ac232 million) rental bounty coming over the next few years.<\/p>\n

One industry estimate suggested that the business rates charged on STE\u2019s data centres alone generate almost 10 per cent of the council\u2019s services budget.<\/p>\n

\"HoardingHoarding surrounds a new data centre under construction in Slough. Photograph: Carl Court\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

At the western edge of the trading estate and Buckingham Avenue are huge facilities such as Equinix\u2019s LD6 and LD4, which handles data for much of London and Europe\u2019s banking transaction and trading traffic.<\/p>\n

Nearby, Irish-founded construction giant Laing O\u2019Rourke is building LD14. It is part of Equinix\u2019s \u00a33.9 billion UK investment pipeline.<\/p>\n

Other big facilities dotted around Buckingham Avenue include those owned and being built by Iron Mountain. Its LON-1 facility was originally used to service Credit Suisse bank, but is now used by many other institutions. Nearby LON-2 is designed for cloud computing while LON-3 is being built for AI machine learning.<\/p>\n

All of the facilities observed by The Irish Times this week were heavily guarded behind high fences and with little branding or outside signage. Data centre developers appear sensitive to the public debate around the power- and water-hungry facilities, which place strain on national infrastructure.<\/p>\n

There is a low-level, constant hum easily detectable all along Buckingham Avenue, which is barely a mile from the town centre. Residents have complained about it in messages to the council. The noise comes from the fans cooling the slews of data centre computers and the electric transformers channelling the facilities\u2019 power.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Mark Little: \u2018Protests against data centres is the biggest wave of civic activism since the 1960s\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Whatever local resentment was brewing in Slough over data centres broke cover this year with two new schemes proposed for outside the trading estate boundaries with its special development zone rules.<\/p>\n

Equinix received outline permission for a huge new data centre at an old paint factory near the hospital that was once slated for 1,000 new homes. Meanwhile, Microsoft wants to build a large centre near Langley train station on a site also once meant to include housing.<\/p>\n

Local resident Ambily Banerjee told local media she set up a WhatsApp group in which residents aired opposition to the Microsoft centre, and things grew from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs word spread, we attracted more residents who were keen to volunteer their time to build a grassroots, resident-led campaign,\u201d she said in one report.<\/p>\n

Slough Against Data Centres was born. It is calling for planners to institute a Scottish-style pause on new data centre developments. By Friday, it had garnered half the 1,500 local signatures necessary to force a formal council debate.<\/p>\n

As well as concerns over power and water, residents are worried about aggravating the local effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearch has suggested clusters of data centres can contribute to an urban heat island effect,\u201d they said, claiming that nearby temperatures can increase by as much as 9 degrees.<\/p>\n

\"RickyRicky Gervais as David Brent in The Office <\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-term effects of hosting one of the world\u2019s largest concentrations of data centres remain poorly understood. With life expectancy of Slough residents already lower than the national average, we cannot afford to further risk our health and quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the UK government, however, money talks \u2013 for now.<\/p>\n

Rayner\u2019s deputy minister, Matthew Pennycook, earlier this year cited \u201cthe need to support economic growth and productivity\u201d when waving through permission for one Slough data centre proposed for a green belt site.<\/p>\n

Economic arguments were also raised by the UK government this summer when it gave the green light to the controversial data centre-led scheme at London\u2019s Brick Lane. Locals are furious the mixed-use project includes just six affordable homes. There are up to 30,000 on the local council\u2019s housing waiting list.<\/p>\n

From the Scottish highlands to Wales, from Leeds to now the mega-hub of Slough, scrutiny of intensive data centre development is increasing across Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian Ricky Gervais was typically astringent in his Mortality television special last year when he addressed the dangers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,5691,61,60,80,1577],"class_list":["post-635967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-data-centres","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}