Think of a data centre and you might picture warehouses tucked away in industrial parks, not a bustling stretch of Salford’s Liverpool Road. Peel Waters have secured planning permission from Salford City Council to redevelop the dilapidated 8-acre site in July 2024, promising a £250 million state-of-the-art digital hub to support Salford’s media and tech related jobs in MediaCity.
However, the approval means the arrival of a sprawling digital powerhouse on the doorsteps of local residents, with a footprint of 66,300 sq ft on a 6.3-acre site that is the former White’s scrap yard site at the Halo West location near the Salford Community Stadium).
For a community already navigating busy match-day traffic and urban expansion, the site has raised concerns among Eccles residents.
The sprawling site will be capable of powering millions of digital connections globally, but will just employ twenty on-site staff. This 6.3-acre powerhouse is projected to draw up to 13.5 megawatts of electricity from the National Grid.
The planned site will be classified as ‘critical national infrastructure’, the same status given to energy and water systems. However for those living in the shadow of the site, it represents more than ‘critical national infrastructure’, it feels like the latest chapter in a long-running story of corporate land management where the community absorbs the disruption.
“Peel Holdings seem to do a lot of building for this area, and not always for the right reasons,” one local resident told Salford Now near Liverpool Road. “It’s more for financial gains than the environment,” he added bluntly.
To secure unanimous planning approval from Salford City Council, Peel Waters leaned heavily into environmental promises. The blueprints boast sustainable construction materials, a landscaped “green buffer” to hide the building from nearby homes and the “potential” to trap the facility’s vast heat exhausts to warm buildings in the future.
This comes at a time where concerns about data centres has come to a head. Data centres are very energy intensive and currently consume 2.5% of the National Grid’s electricity, projected to rise to 10% by 2030 as AI applications and digital services grow. Data centres also produce a vast amount of heat, often using large amounts of fresh water to cool their servers.
A single large-scale data centre can use up to 1.5 million litres of water per day, roughly the same water needs as a small town.
Developers says the site is intentionally set back from Liverpool Road and plans include a green buffer zone to effectively screen the 8-metre structure from nearby residential properties.
The Green Party is calling on the UK Government to end the automatic designation of data centres as ‘critical national infrastructure’, along with tightening rules to prevent data centres’ energy needs taking precedence over homes and businesses. More locally Your Party in Salford launched a petition to prevent future data centres in Salford.
The party also says that planning permission should only be granted when the “highest environmental standards” are met, alongside ‘full community consultation’.
However on the doorsteps of homes and businesses nearby the site, the planned redevelopment comes as an unwelcome surprise. Mike Diskin, 75 (pictured) who lives near Liverpool Road said: “This is the first I’ve actually heard about the build.”
When informed of the plans, another resident near Liverpool Road said: “We don’t want it, clear off.”
Traffic remains a major concern however, as Liverpool Road is a vital route to Salford Community Stadium, as well as being sandwiched between the M60 and the M602.
Resident William Farrington, 73, said: “The traffic is already terrible at the moment,” adding that due to unrelated development in the area “has increased tenfold”.
However, another local resident told Salford Now: “I’ve not got a problem with it, if it’s going to bring employment into the area and not do any damage to the environment.”
A spokesperson for Peel Waters said: “Peel Waters secured planning permission to redevelop the vacant six-acre brownfield site in July 2024 for light industrial units, the planning application for a data centre on the site was submitted subsequently by ‘Digital Land & Development’ and received unanimous approval from Salford City Council’s planning committee in March 2025.
“Peel Waters have not been contacted by the representative who started this petition.”
