Am I the only one not upset over the proposed Brick Lane developments?
Hi folks. Tower Hamlets local here, living not far off Brick Lane.
There's been a massive outcry amongst my neighbours and the immediate areas around Brick Lane about the new data centres and redevelopment planned around Brick Lane. The discourse has contained all of the usual outrage over "higher water/electricity consumption, noise pollution & driving up the cost of living." These are all valid concerns about data centres, but from what I've found, that doesn't appear to be the case here.
First and foremost, the new proposed DC is NOT an AI data centre. More on that later.
I've been living in the area for nearly 15 years, and when this news broke out I vaguely recalled something about a data centre on the Old Truman Brewery complex ages ago. So I looked into it and it turns out I'm right: There are already three existing data centres off of Brick Lane; LON1, LON2, & LON3. LON1 has been operating for over 20 years already, since around '01/'02. LON2 opened around 2012/13 & LON3 opened in 2019. Collectively, they are formally called the "Brick Lane Data Centre" by the Environment Agency. Furthermore, all three are supplied with 100% renewable energy. So in all of the collective outrage, many people don't even know that three data centres are already here, and that one has been running for over two decades, another for over a decade. I also looked into noise complaints made during this time and if any were attributable to the existing Brick Lane DCs and the answer is yes; However the owners of the DCs - Interxion - carried out acoustic mitigation works in 2017 and since then, the Environment Agency said those works reduced generator noise and recorded that "there are no known noise complaints regarding the site."
So what's this DC for? According to the proposal, it's for "colocation and low-latency computing for financial institutions", i.e high-frequency trading. They could technically be used for AI but this would be highly unlikely for this particular DC as you need a 100–500+ MW campus (the proposed is only 4 MW, again, similar to the existing three centres). So using this DC for that would be like trying to mow a lawn with garden shears. Can you? Technically yes. Are you going to? Likely not.
The news / my neighbours are also conveniently leaving out a major important piece of the puzzle: The proposed new development isn't just for a data centre (of the same size as one of the existing LON centres) but also a cinema, supermarket, market and 44 homes (6 for social rent). Importantly, the majority of the site is currently a car park and derelict crumbling warehousing blocks which are nothing more today than a magnet for the junkies from the halfway house on Code Street. I actually avoid cutting through and walking past the area entirely, because it's quite literally a cesspool of heroin needles, broken glass from smashed liquor bottles and drug dealing. I actually accidentally got friendly with the main drug dealer's dog because I did not know at the time that the dog was owned by a notorious drug dealer, but that's a story for another time.
Finally, I also looked at any increases in water / electricity costs for locals following the installation of the existing three data centres and couldn't find anything there either. Household electricity tariffs aren't set neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood according to what happens to be plugged into the local substation. Thames Water 2026–27 household price changes apply as usual throughout the area, under revenue limits set by Ofwat. There was a price increase YoY of 3.4% but this was due to "allowed revenues" and service/infrastructure costs, and nothing specific to do at all with the data centres. The existing DCs actually use "free cooling" method (using cool outside air to remove heat from a data centre instead of running energy-heavy refrigeration compressors all the time), so are actually quite energy efficient. I will say that I was not able to find the exact cooling method proposed for the new centre, so that is something to legitamately keep an eye on.
Bottom line: The proposed new DC is NOT a giant AI-training/hyperscale campus. The existing DCs have been sitting in the middle of Brick Lane for years, surrounded by flats, shops and nightlife, and the regulator's formal assessment recorded no known noise complaints. No evidenced increase in electricity or water usage or price has ever also been attributed to them in the last 20 years.
I for one cannot wait for redevelopment of that area - I'm particularly looking forward to the cinema and market, and in my (pipe) dream, maybe being able to buy one of the flats built there if any of them fall under the shared ownership scheme. The area earmarked for development is a dump, and we can only benefit from investment in the area. People don't do 15 minutes of research to see what the proposed plan is about and what may already be in the area. Instead they've been going to bed every night for the last 20 years with 3 DCs already in the area and most are none the wiser - simply pandering to the false outrage.
There ARE valid reasons to be concerned about DCs. This is not one of them.
SOME OTHER CONTEXT: "But what about locals and businesses and building more affordable homes instead!! 30,000 people are on the council house waiting list in TH!!!" - Lutfur Rahman, TH Mayor. First of all, Rahman is an ethnocentric moron (and I say this as a woman with Bangla heritage) who was LITERALLY CONVICTED FOR ELECTION FRAUD AND BANNED FOR RUNNING FOR 5 YEARS FOR BRIBING LOCAL IMAMS TO GET PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR HIM. Why he was even allowed to run again is beyond me, but here we are. TH appealed to the government and the govt said "Ok, submit your own proposal then." TH had nothing more than a verbal wet dream about building 800 affordable homes on that site instead. So what happened? TH never submitted the proposal. Missed the deadline entirely. Couldn't be arsed to submit one apparently, or maybe they realised that actually building 800 homes/flats in an area that size takes a lot of funding that they neither have nor had any plans of raising. So the only proposal on the table was accepted.
ETA: If you want the full context of whether the current proposal was chosen over one that featured more homes (short answer is NO, because literally no other formal plan was ever actually submitted), read below:
A commenter below mentioned that there was a proposal featuring 350 council homes that was turned down, so I researched this and learned this is not true. What actually happened is that TH developed a planning framework/masterplan for the Truman Brewery area that proposed more council homes. Separately, the "Save Brick Lane" campaigners did actually produce a more concrete alternative housing scheme. However neither of them was ever submitted as an actual planning application. In 2024, the council adopted the "Spitalfields and Banglatown Supplementary Planning Document (SPD)" that contained more residential homes (mind you, just the framework which had no plans for who was gonna build it or how), and this is what the Truman Brewery owners challenged on the basis of not being realistic / feasible, and since TH didn't provide any evidence to show how they'd make this happen, the High Court killed it. When it comes to private land (such as the Truman Brewery site), a SPD is nothing more than the council suggesting what, in their opinion, a planning policy for private land should seek if that land is developed. The council can suggest "we think the planning policy should be primarily residential / mixed development". The crucial missing piece is that following this SPD, TH never submitted a planning application to actually develop anything in their SPD. It's a huge failure on the council's part and as a constituent I'm angry about that, but not surprised at all. TH and especially Rahman are good at ragebaiting and crying foul, without actually putting forward a realistic alternative plan.
And speaking of realistic alternative plans, there were two (well, really only one and a half, kinda). The one I mentioned from the Save Brick Lane campaign which was more robust than TH's initial SPD, but failed for the same reason - no planning application submitted. After that, TH actually regrouped and proposed an even larger proposal (larger than what is proposed by the now-approved Truman Brewery owners) called "Brick Lane and Pedley Street” Site Allocation 1.7" which called for 800 new homes. So what was the downfall here? You guessed it. No planning application. Despite that, the Secretary of State did actually review it anyway, but said "there was no detailed evidence of the feasibility and deliverability of the alternative residential-led scheme" and that "There is no alternative residential-led [planning] application before her." Proposals ≠ formal planning applications. What she was faced with in the end was:
- An actual detailed planning application submitted by the landowner
vs
- A council planning-policy aspiration + an emerging Local Plan allocation + a community-designed residential alternative for land whose owner wasn't proposing to build it, and for which the council had not proposed any means by which to actually fund this development.
She quite literally went with the only option on the table - the only one that submitted a planning application.
