Behind a row of terraced houses in Stockport, a massive construction project is underway. Residents in Reddish first noticed the trucks bringing rubble from the site of a former concrete works, hidden behind large blue hoardings. The old concrete manufacturer had been closed since 2021.
In March 2024, Stockport council’s planning committee approved plans to demolish the industrial complex and replace it with what is said to be northern England’s biggest data centre, at 25,900 square metres. The site, based on Kenwood Road, stretches behind several residential streets.
What is a data centre?
Data centres are physical facilities that store, manage, and process online data. Nearly everything done online, from sending a message to streaming a TV show, relies on them. While many data centres exist around the country, mostly near London, Greater Manchester is seeing a period of expansion, with new buildings planned, including the one in Reddish.
Other projects include a £250m data centre in Salford, approved in 2025, near the Salford Community Stadium in Eccles, creating up to 20 jobs. Plans have also been announced for a data centre in Newton Heath, east Manchester, by Latos Data Centres, on land near the Rochdale Canal.
Local concerns
Residents on Carna Road and surrounding streets are worried about noise and disruption. Danielle, 26, who lives opposite the site, said: “There's noise from there constantly. I understand why we need it, but you would think they could make it quieter with a big data centre.” Sam Rogers, 32, added: “There's been low level construction noise, but it's not been too noticeable so far. We've heard that apparently it might impact the water pressure in the area when it opens, because data centres use so much water.”
Planning reports from 2024 suggested noise would be at background levels, with a 'low impact' on the neighbourhood, far below the noise from the former concrete works. Kao Data, the firm behind the project, said it has addressed water concerns through community engagement, using closed loop liquid cooling technology that will use less water over 20 years than a family of four uses in a year, and will not affect water pressure.
Political and expert views
Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester mayor, visited the site in 2024 and was supportive, saying: “This is the first large scale, modern, zero carbon data centre in Greater Manchester. It will particularly support the development of our AI cluster.” However, Reddish Councillor James Frizzell (Green Party) expressed concerns about location, energy credentials, and job numbers, saying: “It's not going to create that many jobs either and they're not necessarily going to be local jobs, from memory it's about 40 jobs.”
Dr. Yawei Zhao, a lecturer at the University of Manchester, compared data centres to '21st century mills' but was sceptical: “It’s really hard to say whether building more data centres will be good or bad for Greater Manchester.”
The data centre is expected to bring 40 jobs and be operational 24/7. Power delivery is scheduled for completion by September 2027. Kao Data’s director of marketing, Lizzy McDowell, said: “Every online purchase we make, Whatsapp message we send or Netflix series that we watch relies on a data centre to enable it.”
