City AM writes on our involvement in a report calling for the need for increased action on data centres
The UK could lose out on billions of pounds in AI investment unless it tackles growing obstacles to data centre development.
City AM writes on a new report published by infrastructure experts from Charles Russell Speechlys, techUK, the Data Centre Alliance and Copper Consultancy, urging the UK government to move faster on planning reform and energy policy to accelerate the development of data centres.
Titled ‘How to make the UK an AI leader’, the report highlights growing concern across the digital infrastructure sector that the UK’s ambitions to lead in AI will falter unless the country builds the data centres needed to support it.
The report draws on a recent industry roundtable with developers, engineers, planners and legal experts, and points to a range of issues, including long waits for grid connections, energy price volatility, slow-moving planning regimes and low public awareness, that are threatening to hold back the next wave of AI growth in the UK. In some cases, developers are reportedly waiting up to 15 years for access to the electricity grid.
Luisa Cardani, head of the Data Centre Programme at techUK, was quoted as saying that the UK had the “talent, ambition and capability” to lead in AI, but warned that leadership “is not guaranteed” and will require “bold decisions and a shared national vision”.
Read the full report here. Read the article in City AM here.
