Overview
Digital Dagenham has seen the redevelopment of a former contaminated pharmaceutical site in London’s East End, to two new data centres. Our work has included early visioning, detailed application, reviewing, negotiating, and changing detailed planning permissions via S73 submissions, and multiple S96a approvals, steering the planning of the scheme from initial stages to the current implementation.
Project Highlights
Clients
AXA Investment Managers
NTT
Date
2012 - Present
Scale
79,525m² of data centres, with an output of 80MW on 7.4 hectares of brownfield land
Digital infrastructure now powers our daily lives, with the pandemic driving the rapid growth of data centres and advancement of AI. It has been immensely fulfilling to help transform what the Environment Agency once described ‘as one of the most contaminated sites in London’ into infrastructure that has put this part of the city on the global stage. The investment confidence provided by this scheme has attracted film studios, education, and research facilities to the area and is a prime example of positive economic regeneration.
Robert Purton, Partner, David Lock Associates
The Project
The Borough of Barking and Dagenham is one of London’s foremost growth opportunities. Building on recommendations of the independent Growth Commission Report, the 2016 Borough Manifesto set out the potential to deliver a possible 20,000 new jobs in a way which ‘benefits everyone and ensures no one is left behind.’ Part of this initiative has been the transformative change of a redundant manufacturing facility into a critical component of the nation’s digital infrastructure. Abutting the green belt, the scheme has established the area as a green investment opportunity. The data centres and bespoke substation have received coveted BREEAM ‘excellent’ certification, and create a significant amount of power by feeding into a combined scheme providing up to 4,000PV cells generating 1.75MW of solar power per building.
The Process
Our work has been central to the successful delivery of this area wide utility improvement, involving extensive detailed site investigation, remediation work, and a series of carefully orchestrated planning permissions. The historic site, which was previously a Victorian jam factory and prisoner of war camp that produced first aid kits, had both local political support and that of the Mayor of London. Despite this, there were numerous technical challenges. We worked to maintain the political support, while steering the practicalities of delivering critical infrastructure on the complex, brownfield site. Multiple negotiated planning applications resolved complex issues and established the principle of development and details of the scheme.
Our longstanding, detailed knowledge of the project and relationship with the local planning authority, combined with an understanding of the need for flexibility in implementing a scheme over a 10-year period, has been key to the successful delivery of this development. Our responsive approach to the planning challenges has enabled utility, investor and tenant variations to the configuration to be delivered in a timely manner.