The Quiet Revolution: Slough’s story shows how data centres can benefit the UK’s economy and communities for good

Today marks the launch of a new Kao Data white paper, The Quiet Revolution: How Data Centres Remade Slough and Secured the UK’s Digital Future, a detailed account of how a town just west of London became one of the most important digital infrastructure clusters anywhere in the world.

Slough, my hometown, is not usually the first place that comes to mind when people think about the digital economy, or to be honest ‘good news stories’. Yet over the past two decades it has quietly and confidently become Europe’s leading data-centre cluster and the second-largest digital hub globally. It’s a tremendous UK economic and commercial success story, with an estimated 1GW of compute underpinning everything from financial markets and government services to healthcare, cloud computing and AI.

With the current government’s repeated ambitions to establish AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) across the UK, we should be learning from Slough’s journey to a 1GW compute footprint. Slough is also a stellar example of how data centres can provide economic and societal benefit to communities – something often overlooked by the public and local authorities.

Unlike our forward-thinking friends at Slough Borough Council, the common perception of data centres from these groups is littered with mis-understandings. These ‘sheds’ don’t employ many people, what jobs there are are very niche, the facilities themselves suck-up power and water, take-up valuable land, halt housing developments and contribute to climate change. All of that for buildings that ‘just power cat videos’…

This white paper attempts to tells the real story of how Europe’s first 1GW data centre hub came about, the story of how that happened – and why perceptions on data centres don’t always represent reality.

Born from crisis, built for resilience

The modern story of Slough’s digital rise begins in the aftermath of 9/11. When the World Trade Center was attacked, financial institutions in London suddenly realised that concentrating critical digital systems in one urban area – the city and Canary Wharf - was an unacceptable risk. Banks, trading firms and insurers needed a resilient place where their most important systems could run safely if London ever went offline.

The challenge was technical as much as geographical. Disaster-recovery systems had to be outside the capital, but close enough to maintain millisecond-level latency for real-time trading and payments. Very few places could meet both conditions. Slough could.

Close to London, yet far enough away to provide physical separation, and on the opposite side to the city, Slough became the natural answer to a problem that reshaped global finance. What began as a risk-management decision soon became something much bigger.

Geography alone was not enough. Slough also happened to sit at the intersection of some of the UK’s most important infrastructure: Heathrow Airport, the M4 “Silicon Valley” corridor, major rail routes into Paddington, and dense national and international fibre networks. That made it possible to plug data centres directly into the digital bloodstream of London without rebuilding entire networks.

Planning certainty that changed everything

One of the white paper’s most striking findings is the role of planning. In 1996, Slough Borough Council and SEGRO created a Simplified Planning Zone (SPZ) for the Trading Estate. This gave developers pre-approved frameworks for building data centres, cutting approval times from years to weeks.

In a sector where speed and certainty are everything, this made Slough uniquely attractive. Between 2014 and 2024 alone, the SPZ generated around £18 million for the council and has now been extended to 2034. More importantly, it removed the planning risk that has stalled data-centre projects in many other parts of the UK.

By the time cloud computing took off in the 2010s, Slough was already perfectly positioned. Hyperscale operators looking for UK availability zones flocked to the town. An enormous 675MW of hyperscale compute is now operational or in development across Slough, underpinning a vast ecosystem and supply chain that reaches right across the UK.

Economic Impact

The economic impact of the data centre development in Slough, has been profound. Between 2010 and 2025, more than 8,000 construction job-years were created. Across direct, indirect and induced activity, the data-centre sector now supports around 14,000 jobs and contributes over £30 million a year in local business rates. 

Addressing the environmental debate

The white paper also tackles the most common criticisms of data centres head-on. Power use is high, but around 95% of Slough’s data-centre electricity demand is backed by 100% renewable procurement. Backup generators, often cited in public debate, are rarely used outside regulated testing. Newer sites like Kao Data’s KLON-06 have switched to Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO), cutting emissions by around 90%. Water use, once a major concern, is being revolutionised due to the design across modern facilities and the advent of liquid cooling. 

With twenty major grid-reinforcement projects under way and pilots in heat reuse, on-site generation and hydrogen-ready backup, Slough is also becoming a testbed for the next generation of low-carbon digital infrastructure.

What Slough teaches the UK

The central message of The Quiet Revolution is that Slough’s success was not an accident. It was the result of geography, infrastructure, skills and, above all, thanks to forward thinking governance, land accessibility and long-term planning certainty coming together over time.

But the lesson of 9/11 still applies. Concentration creates vulnerability. Slough now hosts more than thirty data centres and underpins critical national systems. That success means the UK must now think about building the next Slough elsewhere. To my mind, Greater Manchester represents probably the best, next location, which is why Kao Data is developing what will be the UK’s largest data centre in Stockport.

The future of Britain’s digital economy will depend not on a single super-cluster, but on a network of resilient regional hubs. Slough shows what is possible and the benefits data centres can provide. The task now is to replicate it – deliberately, regionally and at scale – so that the UK’s digital future is not only powerful, but secure.