The Government is set to commit to the building of new data centres to help attract artificial intelligence firms to the UK and boost internet speeds for consumers.
Sir Keir Starmer has been meeting tech bosses who are keen to see more data centres built in Britain in order to expand the country’s computing capabilities.
Data centres are buildings housing a large number of computer servers which can be used to process AI operations or to provide internet connectivity to households.
Ministers have already promised to set up “AI growth zones” where the state will ensure a sufficient supply of power and water to enable companies to build new centres.
And Rachel Reeves said she would unveil “digital infrastructure” as part of the process of allocating funds in the spending review which will be published on Wednesday.
The Government’s technology strategy revolves around using planning laws, better infrastructure and a limited amount of public funding to encourage companies to invest.
More details will be set out in the spending review as well as in next week’s 10-year infrastructure strategy and the industrial strategy paper published later in the month.
Ministers hope to overcome local opposition to new data centres – which can be large and unsightly – by setting them up as part of an eco-system which creates jobs in the areas where they are built.
They are also considering ideas to make the most of the facilities for the benefit of people living nearby, such as using excess heat from the centres to warm up local swimming pools.
The areas that will host new data centres are likely to be confirmed at a future date. Government advisers have suggested that post-industrial towns in England and the Scottish coast, where there is often an excess of energy capacity, could be good candidates.
The centres are essential to AI companies which want to develop, train and deploy their models. Jensen Huang, head of the world’s most valuable company Nvidia, said this week that the UK was “the largest AI eco-system in the world without its own infrastructure.”
The Government has already designated data centres as “critical national infrastructure,” and changed planning laws so that local authorities must consider the country’s need for more computing power when weighing up planning applications.
Experts have said that as well as changes to planning regulations, companies need reassurance that they will be able to access the electricity grid more easily and also have a reliable source of water, which is needed to cool the equipment in data centres.
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Read MoreThe Prime Minister told tech chiefs this week: “We are going to build more labs, more data centres – and we’re going to do it much, much more quickly.” He also announced £1bn to increase the amount of computing power available to scientific researchers by a factor of 20.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has sometimes been accused of getting too close to US big tech firms, while there are also questions about the environmental impact of building large numbers of new computing centres in the British countryside. Ministers insist the plans are essential to boosting future economic growth.
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