Britain doesn't have to choose between building homes and data centres

The scheme includes offices, shops, public space, 44 homes and a new data centre.

Local campaigners wanted a housing-led scheme instead. Their plan promised 350 homes in a borough where more than 30,000 households sit on the social housing waiting list. The dispute has turned one London site into part of a much wider question: should scarce land, electricity and construction workers go towards homes or the data centres that power our growing use of AI?

From inside the construction industry, that question feels too blunt. Britain needs more homes. It also needs the digital infrastructure that supports banks, hospitals, public services and much of modern business. Demand for computing power will grow, whether we build the facilities here or rely on more of them overseas.

We need to look instead at how much we can build with each acre of land, megawatt of power and hour of skilled work. That matters because the strain has already begun to show. Since 2022, grid capacity constraints temporarily halted new housing developments in Hillingdon, Hounslow and Ealing. These boroughs share part of the electricity network that serves the large cluster of data centres around Slough and Heathrow.

Pressure will continue to grow: the National Energy System Operator estimates that data centres currently use 7.6 terawatt-hours of electricity in Great Britain, with demand potentially reaching between 30 and 71 terawatt-hours by 2050.

The construction industry cannot create that power. It can, though, use land, materials and labour far better than we do now. Britain still builds too much on site, from scratch, in poor weather and within tight plots. Teams often find that designs do not quite fit only after work has begun. Pipes meet beams. Ducts clash with cable trays. Parts arrive at the wrong time. Workers then spend days cutting, moving and rebuilding things that someone could have caught months earlier.

Project teams can prevent much of this by bringing architects, engineers and builders together earlier and checking that their plans agree before work starts. Too often, each part of a project develops on its own. Problems only come to light when two trades arrive to work in the same space. A few hours spent checking the full design can save days of work on site and cut the amount of material that ends up in a skip.

This is less about any one piece of technology and more about how firms plan and share information. Everyone working from the same measurements, drawings and build sequence has a much better chance of getting the job right the first time.

Off-site manufacturing can take more work away from crowded building plots. A factory can make wall panels, service cupboards, bathroom units and sections of a building’s frame to set measurements. Workers then fit them together on site.

This approach suits data centres because much of the building repeats. Builders can make plant rooms, cooling equipment and banks of electrical gear in sections, then add more as demand grows. A developer does not always need to build a vast site at full size from day one.

Housebuilders can use the same thinking without filling the country with rows of identical homes. Buyers care about the look, size and feel of their home. They rarely care whether every pipe behind the bathroom wall has a different layout. Builders can use the same hidden parts across many house types while varying the outside, the room plan and the finish.

This also makes better use of skilled workers. Britain lacks enough electricians, engineers, site managers and many other trades. Factory work increases build productivity while giving people a steady setting, clearer tasks and less time lost to travel or bad weather. On site, good plans and accurate setting-out help each trade finish its work once and move on. Reworking mistakes costs time, money and materials, and contributes significantly to the perennial low profitability of construction companies. The grid remains the harder part of the problem. New data centres should go where the network can support them, or where developers can add new supply. That requires a much closer link between planning, construction and power. It’s not a good idea to approve buildings first and then how to power them later.

Developers should also carry a fair share of the cost when their projects need major grid work. Phased building can help here too: it allows power demand to rise in planned steps rather than arriving all at once.

The same care should apply to water and heat. Cooling systems not only use a lot of power, but can also use large amounts of water, which makes little sense in areas that already face shortages. Builders and operators should choose cooling methods that suit the site - using natural ventilation where possible - collect rainwater where that works and plan for heat reuse from the start. Waste heat can warm nearby homes or public buildings, but only when teams design the infrastructure early enough in the project.

No single method will free all the land, power or labour Britain needs. Taken together, better planning, more factory-made parts, phased construction and sound grid planning can make a marked difference. Freeing up more skilled tradespeople to build more homes, as well as data centres, will make it easier for us to have both homes and a growing economy.

Brick Lane will not settle the question. More disputes will follow as demand for homes, power and computing grows. Construction can ease that strain by getting more from every site and wasting less of what we already have.

Britain has the skills to build both. We now need to use them with much greater care.

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Hugh McEvoy is the Senior Director of Strategy & Business Development at Trimble.

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