A snapshot of Britain's datacenter estate puts nearly 40 percent of its facilities in London, along with about two-thirds of its estimated colocation capacity, although development is spreading beyond the capital.

The analysis counts 555 UK server farms, matching Statista's latest figure. It puts their combined IT capacity at about 1.6 GW.

By facility count, that would put Blighty second only to the US, although there is a considerable gap between the two.

The study data was compiled by Karas Plating, a UK-based specialist in electroplating and surface coatings for critical electrical components and power distribution systems.

The firm presumably has an eye on where new business might emerge as new datacenters are planned as part of the government's AI Opportunities Action Plan.

It will surprise nobody that London is the nexus of the UK's data infrastructure, with clusters of bit barns to serve the financial markets in the City, and along the M4 motorway corridor close to the fiber-optic cable routes that stretch west from the capital to join the undersea cables linking with North America.

London has 219 active facilities, according to the analysis, or about 40 percent of the total. This adds up to 1,048 MW, or two-thirds of the country's entire datacenter compute capacity. It also leads the way in future growth with 15 planned expansion projects.

But the report also indicates there is a significant shift taking place toward high-capacity regional infrastructure to support growing demand. This is something The Register has previously reported on, as developers look away from London due to issues like power shortages and planning constraints.

Outside the Big Smoke, South East England claims 62 current facilities, adding up to 128 MW capacity, with ten planned developments, the second-biggest expansion queue nationwide. We assume that these include bit barns close to London's M25 orbital motorway, such as the massive campus planned by colocation firm Equinix at South Mimms.

Further afield, North West England has 39 active facilities with 52 MW capacity, and five upcoming builds. This makes it the region with the largest number of planned projects outside of the traditional hot spot of London and the South East.

The East of England and Scotland both have more operational datacenters, the first with 45 and a total of 44 MW capacity, while north of the border there are no fewer than 49 with a total of 30 MW.

Wales currently boasts 32 active sites, but these make for a total of 154 MW of IT capacity, coming in second only to London.

The region with the fewest current operational server farms is the South West, which has 20 sites adding up to 54 MW, and two new facilities planned. One of these is presumably the controversial Devon data campus near Great Torrington, which is claimed will house 1.5 GW of AI-optimized compute capacity.

Just ahead is North East England, where there are 21 sites with a total of 17 MW capacity. This will change in the near future, however, as US investment giant Blackstone has plans for a huge facility near Blyth, Northumberland, said to be large enough for 720 MW of IT.

OpenAI also aims to build a Stargate datacenter project at Cobalt Park, North Tyneside, although it has put these plans on hold for now, citing reasons such as the cost of energy in the UK. ®