# Londoners fight a Brick Lane datacentre, and it is not even for AI > Source: > Published: 2026-07-08 11:24:16+00:00 *Residents in east London are fighting a datacentre planned for Brick Lane, saying the site should hold homes, not servers. The twist: it would serve high-frequency trading, not AI.* Britain’s datacentre backlash has reached the heart of east London. Residents around Brick Lane oppose a plan for the old Truman Brewery site. It would put a datacentre there, [Matthew Taylor reports for the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/07/london-campaign-planned-ai-datacentre-brick-lane). The street is known for its curry houses and 24-hour bagel shops. The Save Brick Lane campaign says the 5,200 sq metre facility would bring no benefit. Its members want housing instead. Tower Hamlets council has 31,000 people on its social housing waiting list. “We have a severe housing crisis here,” said Jonathan Moberly, a resident and campaigner. He wants the site to hold affordable, ideally council, homes. “This datacentre will bring literally no benefit to anyone living here,” he added. ## Not an AI datacentre at all Here is the twist. The plan rides the AI-driven wave of new datacentres. Yet this one would not train a single chatbot. Planning documents show it would serve high-frequency trading. Firms in the City use such systems to fire off huge volumes of trades in a fraction of a second. Proximity matters, because milliseconds count. The documents put peak output at 5.2MW. That is enough to power about 15,000 homes, campaigners say. Noise ranks as a second worry. A nearby datacentre already draws complaints over a persistent low hum. Residents describe it as “like a huge fridge”. ## Homes or servers The row lands on a hard trade-off. A recent London Assembly report found the rapid spread of datacentres delays badly needed housing. The grid cannot power both at once. It echoes a fight now [playing out over power bills](https://thenextweb.com/news/data-centres-rust-belt-power-bills) elsewhere. Faysal Ahmed, a Tower Hamlets councillor and cabinet member, opposes the plan. He said the community and council stood united against it. Canary Wharf, he argued, would make a far better site. It “defies all logic to propose a datacentre on Brick Lane”, he said. Tower Hamlets rejected the scheme last year. A public inquiry followed. Housing secretary Steve Reed then called in the decision, so the government will rule on it by 17 August. The Truman Brewery company, which is behind the plan, did not respond to requests for comment. ## A national flashpoint Brick Lane is one of scores of such fights. In February, Ofgem counted about 140 datacentre schemes in the pipeline. Together they could need 50GW of electricity, some 5GW above the country’s current peak demand. The same pressure keeps [capital pouring into the build-out](https://thenextweb.com/news/nscale-900m-revolving-credit-facility), even as projects [get scrapped elsewhere](https://thenextweb.com/news/blackstone-qts-terminates-digital-gateway-virginia). Oliver Hayes, of the campaign group Global Action Plan, said communities from Tower Hamlets to Fife had joined the fight. He wants a moratorium on new AI datacentres. It would hold until ministers show how many are needed, and where. Scotland has already [floated its own freeze](https://thenextweb.com/news/scotland-datacentre-moratorium-uk-ai-strategy). ## Why it matters Datacentres form the backbone of both the AI economy and the City’s trading engines. The UK [wants far more of them](https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-apparently-never-visited-the-site-of-its-flagship-uk-ai-project). Brick Lane shows the catch. As the boxes multiply, communities ask a sharper question: who do the servers serve? The government’s 17 August call will hint at the answer. ## Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.