Manchester is one of the UK’s most commercially and digitally developed cities. With a solid industrial background, the city is home to a growing tech scene and creative industries. Over the last 20 years, the city has digitally reinvented itself. Most of the focus has been on the media firms, tech startups, and innovation districts. However, this has overshadowed a quieter and unobtrusive form of growth.
Today, data centres are one of the most important parts of Manchester's developing economy. Manchester has long been home to streaming services, cloud computing, and AI data centres. While it is true that these centres are still relatively obscure and invisible, they are integrated into more and more daily services, like video meetings and smart city services. These services make the once invisible centres a crucial part of the city's economy. The developing digital services and data centres are key to the city's economic future.
Why Data Centres Are Moving Beyond London
The London and South East areas of the UK Data Centre industry have dominated the UK Data Centre industry for the longest time. Their proximity to finance, international companies and other global customers, as well as their international connectivity, makes it a logical choice. However, this regional concentration is facing increasing challenges. Available power is becoming more tightly constrained, land is limited, and the costs of development are increasing. Because of these pressures, major extensions will become more and more difficult and costly.
In addition, the digital economy has expanded beyond the means of a single region. With the rapidly changing digital economy centred around cloud platforms, data does not need to reside in London to perform well. Although latency is still a key driver in positioning infrastructure, it is no longer the singular aspect that needs to be focused on to optimise a location.
Consequently, the digital infrastructure of the UK cannot be designed and constructed as “London-only”. Manchester, with its adequate size and level of connectivity, should be able to fill in this gap and help the UK create a more balanced national digital infrastructure.
Connectivity: Manchester’s Strategic Advantage
Connectivity within Manchester is one of the most important factors when considering the development of data centres. Manchester is regarded as one of the most significant northern internet exchange hubs, meaning data is able to be exchanged in the area rather than routed to and from London. This increased Manchester internet exchange hub status reduces congestion, increases performance, and ensures digital services can be accessed more quickly across the North of England.
There are high-capacity fibre routes flowing through Manchester, providing the region with access to London, Scotland, Leeds, Liverpool, and other cities. These routes help to keep digital services flowing across the Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool digital backbone. For enterprises and cloud and software-as-a-service providers, maintaining uptime and service quality is vital.
Given its position on the western coast, Manchester can access routes that lead to subsea cable landing points. These routes are especially valuable as they provide access to foreign networks, including transatlantic routes and the European continent. For businesses that are working with data-heavy tasks, including artificial intelligence models and cloud-based services, seamless connectivity fosters reliability, speed, and scalability. For these reasons, Manchester is a compelling option for new digital infrastructure.
Power, Land, and Infrastructure Availability
Beyond connectivity, practical considerations play a major role in where data centres are built. Compared to London and the South East, Manchester offers relatively greater access to power, which is a critical requirement for data-heavy facilities. As demand for computing capacity increases, the ability to secure reliable energy supplies has become a deciding factor.
Greater Manchester also offers access to suitable industrial land, much of it shaped by the region’s manufacturing and logistics history. Former industrial sites and logistics hubs can be repurposed to support modern infrastructure, often with fewer planning constraints than more densely developed areas. This availability reduces both development timelines and costs.
Local planning policies and regeneration zones have further supported this transition, encouraging investment in areas that benefit from redevelopment. From a commercial perspective, these conditions make Manchester attractive not just for building data centres, but for operating them sustainably over the long term. The city offers the physical space and infrastructure needed to support growth without the bottlenecks seen elsewhere.
Local Demand: Manchester’s Digital Economy
Manchester’s growing data centre presence is closely tied to local demand. The city has one of the largest and most diverse digital economies outside London, spanning technology, media, fintech, health innovation, and professional services. This ecosystem generates a strong need for secure, low-latency, UK-based data hosting.
MediaCityUK is home to broadcasters, production companies, and digital media firms that rely heavily on data storage and fast connectivity. Meanwhile, startups and scaleups across the city are building cloud-native products that require dependable infrastructure close to their teams and users. Larger enterprises with regional headquarters in Manchester also increasingly favour local hosting to support performance and compliance needs.
For many organisations, having infrastructure nearby provides reassurance around data sovereignty, system reliability, and operational control. As more businesses digitise their services, the preference for infrastructure that is geographically aligned with operations continues to grow. This makes Manchester’s role as both a demand centre and infrastructure hub particularly strong.
Manchester’s Role in a More Balanced UK Digital Network
Nationally, the UK is moving towards a more distributed digital infrastructure model. Rather than relying on a single dominant hub, capacity is increasingly spread across multiple regional centres. This approach improves resilience by reducing the risk of widespread disruption caused by localised outages or capacity constraints.
Manchester’s position within this network is complementary to London rather than competitive. London remains a global financial and digital gateway, while Manchester strengthens the UK’s northern capacity and supports regional connectivity. Together, these hubs create redundancy and flexibility across the national network.
This decentralised model also supports broader regional growth, ensuring that digital infrastructure investment benefits more parts of the country. By strengthening northern hubs, the UK builds a more robust, inclusive, and future-ready digital economy.
Industry Presence and Investment
Operators like Datum and other colocation providers from the UK showcase the increasing confidence in Manchester as an enduring site for fundamental digital facilities. While Datum Manchester’s opening embodies a single development achievement, it serves a broader industry narrative. Investment choices have a clear emphasis on the availability of power, land, local demand, and most importantly, the business connectivity which Manchester is touted to provide.
The growing industry confidence in the area suggests most importantly that the forecasted growth of the city’s data centres is not some singular act of opportunism, but in fact demonstrates a clear intention to meet the digital needs of the market as they evolve. With increasing digitalisation, the requirements for appropriate levels of computing capacity will only serve to entrench Manchester as a significant player in the digital infrastructure market.
Conclusion
The city of Manchester is currently experiencing a structural growth of its data centres, evidenced by the high levels of connected infrastructure, present development opportunities, and a clear local need for the city’s digital underpinning infrastructure to be built. The growing number of data centres in the city will provide a digital equivalent to transport networks and utilities, delivering the essential infrastructure that supports modern life and economic activity.
It is predicted that Manchester will increasingly strengthen its role as the north’s primary digital hub and its primary northern anchor across the UK as it heads toward a multi-hub digital layout.