Plans in for West Sleekburn Data Centre
Wansbeck Regeneration has applied to build an almost 4m sq ft facility in Northumberland, less than two miles from QTS’s 6m sq ft Cambois campus.
Located on 70 acres of the former GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical factory site, which closed in 2004, plans at this stage more specifically include 3.9m sq ft GIA across three data centres, two substations, one gas power plant, one water tank, and one water storage pump room.
As to the question of power, Wansbeck Regeneration, which was incorporated in May last year and has been in pre-application discussions with Northumberland Council since the following July, has said the facility will have ancillary power generation of up to 49.9MW.
The gas generation is intended to be a bridging solution to help IT deployment while waiting for the full load to be provided on site. Once the site is fully operational, the gas generation unit will be removed.
Originally, the plan was for four data centres, with three on the northern part of the site and one in the southen part although following discussions with the council, the southern one has been removed.
The project team includes planning consultant Lichfields, architect TTSP, and consultants Stantec, Pegasus, and JNP.
The site lies to the east of West Sleekburn, and is bound by the River Wansbeck to the north, industrial estates to the east, and agricultural land to the south and west. Part of the site is also intersected by the Blyth and Tyne Railway Line.
As with QTS’s nearby Cambois Data Centre, the land was formerly within the Cambois Zone of Economic Opportunity, part of the Wansbeck local plan. Outline approval from Renaissance Land for the construction of 10 data centres on the former Blyth Power station was approved by Northumberland Council in March last year.
This latest application follows the designation of areas in the North East as an AI Growth Zone in September last year. The government announced that the former Blyth Power Station site (home to the Renaissance Land/QTS campus) and Cobalt Park in North Tyneside (previously proposed as the location for the Stargate data centre backed by OpenAI, which has since paused the project) would form part of the initiative.
