Data Centres: The Costs, Casualties and Opportunities

The UK has become Europe’s main hub for digital infrastructure. The Slough and west London corridor data centre hub, for example, is one of the largest in the world. In response to demand, and due to anxieties over AI sovereignty, the government has streamlined the planning process for data centres. They have been designated as critical national infrastructure, therefore overriding local council and community objections. All the while, the speed and scale of growth is placing significant strain on energy and water resources, communities and the environment.

Across the country, people are demonstrating against the AI server factories in their local areas. Grid capacity is limited, water is scarce with many areas still in drought, and there is insufficient transparency around the uses for data centres and the health, heat and noise risks they pose to communities.

As public awareness and government policy struggle to keep up with the pace of growth, and concerns rise over speculative development and market fragility, we look at the feasibility and sustainability of data centre hyper-scaling. Who stands to gain from it, what should we be asking our government to do about it, and how can we speak up for the communities, nature and the resources at risk? With the Environmental Audit Committee soon to share its report on the ‘Risks and Opportunities of the Sustainability of Data Centres’, we’ll consider how to use its findings and recommendations.

Our panel of expert speakers, including Global Action Plan, community leaders, CPRE and data centre developers, and chaired by author and Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien, will discuss what ‘good’ could look like: asking how data centre growth could be managed more sustainably, and how policy and planning regulations could be strengthened to support this.

Join us for an urgent, empowering and solutions-focused conversation, and come ready to share your own thoughts and ideas.

Event Schedule

6:15pm: Pre-event socialising and networking
A cash bar will be available for refreshments.

6:30pm: Event begins

7:30pm: Event ends

Speakers

Hettie O’Brien is a journalist interested in money and power. She writes about financiers, fraudsters, short sellers, cities, shopping malls, history, economics and ideas. Her work exposes how complex systems and financial arrangements are transforming our lives by telling stories about the people and places they shape. Her first book, The Asset Class, is a narrative investigation of the private equity industry. It will be published on 9 April 2026 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) and 23 June 2026 by Grand Central (US), and was awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2024. She’s a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read and has previously worked for the New Statesman as an editor and writer, and as a reporter in Washington D.C.

Full panel to be announced soon.