The plan to turn London into a data doughnut
A new wave of power-hungry warehouses could be coming to outer London
Morning — Docklands warehouses filled with tea, coffee and spices were at the heart of London commerce in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 21st century, it looks like it’ll be the cold, windowless server rooms of Uxbridge and Havering.
Over the past few years, outer London has seen an explosion in power-hungry warehouses used for cloud computing and AI — to such an extent that they’ve now pushed the capital’s electricity grid to the limit. But aside from buckling infrastructure, the other main constraint on London’s data centre rollout has been resistant locals, intent on protecting the green belt that encircles the city. Perhaps not for much longer, though, if Labour wins the general election. The plan to turn London into a data doughnut is after your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: hope for the Lizzy line, flag drama, and the £15m painting found at a London bus stop.
In case you missed it: “She doesn’t need to chain herself to French House in the name of a pedestrianised Soho – but would a scandalised press conference be too much to ask?” On Thursday we published a deep dive into London’s nightlife debate — and specifically what’s said about Amy Lamé, the capital’s night czar. If you’re not yet a paid Spy subscriber, you can read the full thing by starting a 7-day trial at the end of your preview of the article. Or, if you’re already keen to support us, sign up straight away using the button below.
What we’ve spied
🗳️ LONDON VOTES 🗳️ Here’s what to know about the general election campaign in London this week:
A south London candidate has apologised for comparing Sadiq Khan to the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s air force. Lee Roberts, the Conservative candidate for Putney, was recorded calling the London mayor a “snivelling little drip” at a meeting with party supporters in September 2023, as well as describing him as “the man who has done more to destroy London than the Luftwaffe”. Roberts has kind of apologised, describing his words as “clumsy and crass”, but he also said he stood by the “sentiment”. FYI Putney is currently held by Labour, having been the only constituency gained by the party in the entire country in the 2019 general election.
Another headache for London Conservatives — a candidate has been forced to withdraw thousands of leaflets after a complaint by the Met Police. Hannah Gray, Tory candidate for Beckenham & Penge in southeast London, had included a photo of a senior police officer in campaign materials, which the Met objected to, because the image was used without the force’s knowledge and suggested the officer was backing Gray. It’s suspected several hundred leaflets were posted before the recall.
Most of the main parties unveiled their manifestos this week, but it was slim pickings for Londoners in terms of commitments specific to their city. In fact, Labour didn’t explicitly mention the capital a single time throughout its manifesto’s policy sections. Instead, the Conservatives had the most London mentions, with the party unveiling pledges to scrap the ULEZ expansion, complete the HS2 leg to Euston, and raise housing density levels in inner London “to those of European cities like Paris and Barcelona”. The Lib Dems had a few London pledges in their manifesto, including getting the Met Police to adopt an “urgent plan” to rebuild Londoners’ trust by implementing the recommendations of the recent Casey Review, plus pausing plans to expand capacity at London City Airport. One big commitment in the Green Party manifesto is giving councils the power to bring in rent controls — something mayor Sadiq Khan used to campaign for in London too, before going quiet recently. Reform hadn’t published their manifesto as of writing.
Labour HQ has told some London activists they’re campaigning in their own city too much, and should be heading to more competitive seats further afield. Activists in east London are reportedly being redirected to Rochester and Strood in Kent, Hitchin in Hertfordshire and Kettering in Northamptonshire, while those in north-west London are being redirected to Aldershot in Hampshire. But some are resistant, telling HQ they’re uncomfortable ignoring voters locally, especially in relation to the party’s stance on Gaza.
🚅 After constant teething problems since launch, reinforcements are now on the way to the Elizabeth line. Ten new trains have been ordered to “support growing passenger demand” on the line, after TfL and the Department for Transport stumped up £370m for a deal with train maker Alstom in Derby. It follows a £140m injection of cash into the Lizzy line for improvements earlier this year, in the hope of fixing the frequent delays and cancellations facing the line’s commuters since it opened in 2022. Elsewhere in London transport this week: there are reportedly plans in the works to boost the frequency of Night Tube trains past midnight. Also: there’s been a huge rise in the number of TfL staff being paid more than £100,000 a year — 1,319 in 2023/24, versus 766 in the previous financial year.
🧳 Councils are giving homeless families strict 24-hour ultimatums to move out of London or risk being kicked out onto the streets, a campaign group has revealed. Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) has acquired figures that show 319 households in 2023 accepted offers of a private tenancy outside London, in many cases only after being given 24 hours by council officials to accept or risk making themselves “intentionally homeless” by refusing. One in ten were placed in the north east of England — Hartlepool and Durham particularly — while two in ten were sent to the Midlands. Waltham Forest was the London council sending the most households outside the capital — a spokesperson said: “Unfortunately, there are simply not enough available properties in the borough”.
🏳️🌈 The number of Pride flags hanging in central London is borderline “authoritarian” and “oppressive”, according to, er, former Top Gear presenter James May. On Thursday May posted a photo of Pride flags hanging in Regent Street to X/Twitter and wrote: “Pride: while I have observed and admired what you have achieved over my lifetime, may I respectfully suggest that you are borderline guilty of Too Much Bunting (TMB). It may be seen as authoritarian, and therefore oppressive”. He goes on to suggest ‘TMB’ started the Second World War. His post was viewed more than 3.5m times and led to more than 1,800 replies, one of the most liked being: “TMB is a decision made by councils and corporations. While the show of support is always appreciated, these flags will be binned in two weeks and forgotten about until next year. Unlike the struggles the LGBT+ Community face globally, which is constant”. It would also turn out that May had used an out-of-date photo of Pride flags on Regent Street from 2022. A more recent one here. And here’s what ‘Jeremy Clarkson’ made of it all. BTW: this year’s London Pride is taking place on Saturday, June 29.
🏴 More on flags: the soaring cost of a St George’s Cross has hit a south London estate, famed as being ‘England’s most patriotic’ for its displays during international football tournaments. Around 60 flags had been hung up in Kirby Estate in Bermondsey ahead of England’s Euros opener against Serbia later today, versus as many as 700 flags during past tournaments. Residents blame inflation: “We used to get them on a deal for 33p each, then it shot up to £3 a flag, and now they are even more expensive,” says display organiser Chris Dowse. The estate has at least got a new giant mural in time for this year’s Euros though, depicting England midfielder Eberechi Eze. Since the story got picked up at the end of last week, some Kirby Estate residents have now set up a GoFundMe page to help buy more flags.
🍺 An update on one of the boozers featured in our recent investigation into London’s pub tycoons — the White Swan in Charlton. An Isle of Man company called Mendoza, linked to the prolific pub-shutting family of Asif Aziz, had wanted to turn the pub into flats and a Tesco, but a planning inspector this week rejected the proposed conversion, potentially ending a long-running saga over the future of the building. The White Swan has for the most part sat empty since the pub closed in March 2020, but at the end of last month, Greenwich Wire revealed that Croydon council has used the site to house people in need of temporary accommodation, in an outhouse. Before that, last September a cannabis farm was discovered in the empty pub. More updates when we have it on what happens to the White Swan next.
👮 A Met Police officer has been fined £1,500 for assaulting a woman who was wrongly arrested for fare evasion in front of her young son in Croydon last year. As seen in footage that was widely shared at the time in July 2023, PC Perry Lathwood, 50, manhandled Jocelyn Agyemang, roughly grabbing her by the arm and leaving her with bruising. Agyemang said the incident was "deeply humiliating and embarrassing" and that Lathwood had a "look of contempt in his eyes" that day, in a victim personal statement read out at Westminster magistrates’ court on Friday. However, a judge said Lathwood’s actions were an “error of judgement”, rather than “an abuse of power”. Lathwood is appealing his conviction.
🏗️ PLANNING CORNER 🏗️ James May isn’t the only celeb to weigh in on a London issue this week — musicians Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton have backed a campaign to stop a new tower block at Battersea Bridge. The pair are among those signing a petition to stop a 34-storey tower called One Battersea Bridge, which is being built by developer Promonotoria Battersea and would create 142 homes, 45 of which (32%) would be affordable. Campaigners, led by journalist Rob McGibbon, argue the tower would spoil the river view and cause traffic problems. Meanwhile, City Hall has said it could overturn a council’s decision to refuse 449 new homes in Tooting. The London mayor’s planning deputy, Jules Pipe, has announced a public hearing over a redevelopment project around Springfield Hospital, known as ‘Springfield Village’. 839 homes already have approval at the site, but in March Wandsworth council rejected the final phase of the project, which would boost the total to 1,288. City Hall has also weighed in this week on the Mortlake development, with Sadiq Khan’s office challenging ‘unacceptable’ numbers of affordable homes proposed at the brewery regeneration project. Mortlake, in Richmond, is currently subject to a planning inquiry. One last thing: an upscale hotel between the Barbican and the Museum of London has been approved. That whole area is seeing a lot of change, after the City of London Corporation gave the go-ahead to demolish the old Museum of London building.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
From green belt to data belt
Amid the noise of the general election campaign this week came a story with big implications for outer London: a plan to unlock the protected land around the capital for giant warehouses filled with servers.
As the Telegraph reports, Labour is looking at changing the law to make it easier for tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google to build data centres on the outskirts of UK cities, if the party wins the election.
Data centres have already become big business in London — by some estimates, there are now 120 dotted throughout the capital. They house vast arrays of servers which hum away in artificially cooled rooms and provide the computing power needed for things like training AI algorithms or streaming movies and TV shows.
They’ve cropped up so quickly that London’s electricity grid is struggling to keep up. In 2022, the grid in west London hit capacity amid a heatwave, prompting the Greater London Authority to warn developers it might have to ban any new homes being built in the area until 2035.
Partly to blame was the significant corridor of data centres that have popped up in outer west London, around Hillingdon, which takes advantage of the fibre optic cables that run along the M4 and then cross the Atlantic.
It’s now become the most powerful data hub in the world, outside of the US, and sucks up a lot of power.
The grid bottleneck it helped caused was serious — more than 50 different housing projects, including some in London’s affordable housing programme, were potentially put at risk.
But later in 2022, Scottish and Southern Electricity networks came up with a solution with the National Grid that allowed some smaller housing projects in west London to go ahead.
It’s not just power though — the data centres are thirsty as well. Last year Thames Water began considering whether to reduce the amount of water it fed to London’s data centres, to deal with surging demand.
But aside from these infrastructure constraints, a human factor has also been curtailing London’s data centre rollout: resistant locals.
An example came just this week, when a London-based company called Digital Reef put forward plans to build Europe’s biggest data centre in Havering, outer east London.
Locals have already started mounting a campaign against it, with Havering Friends of the Earth leading the charge. They argue the plans amount to “creeping industrialisation” of what little countryside remains around London.
Other proposed London data centres have already been blocked in the name of protecting the green belt.
Last October, housing secretary Michael Gove ruled against plans to build a project known as the West London Technology Park, which would have seen a former landfill site on the Buckinghamshire border redeveloped into a data centre.
Dismissing a planning appeal from developer Greystoke Land, Gove said the development would “significantly harm” the openness of the green belt around London.
So this is where Labour’s plan comes in.
According to the Telegraph, Sir Keir Starmer’s party is considering whether to class data centres as ‘nationally significant infrastructure projects’ if it formed the next UK government.
This special status would make it easier to build data centres on green belt land and override opposing councils, including in London.
It comes amid wider proposals from Labour to turn over more of the green belt to building projects, including for housing, though on the less idyllic chunks of land — what Starmer calls the ‘grey belt’.
In theory, with special planning rules, data centres might start popping up all over the green belt that circles London — encasing the capital in a data centre doughnut.
But of course, as the rollout has already proved so far, NIMBYs aren’t the only constraint. London’s grid or water network might end up buckling first…