AI Growth Zones, and the map they are drawing
Oxfordshire, the North East, Scotland and Wales have zones. The North West registered interest and is still waiting. That matters more for skills than for data centres.
AI Growth Zones are the government's mechanism for putting large scale AI computing capacity into specific places, with planning and power treated as part of the offer. The map so far is worth knowing if you employ people in the North West.
Where the zones are
- Culham in Oxfordshire, the pilot, announced January 2025, starting at 100MW and designed to scale to 500MW
- The North East, at Cobalt Park near Newcastle and at Blyth in Northumberland, announced September 2025
- Lanarkshire in Scotland, announced January 2026
- Wales, announced January 2025
The North West registered interest in February 2025 and has not been designated. North Lincolnshire has bid, proposing £15bn of private investment and 1.5 gigawatts of capacity across four data centres.
Why a data centre is not the point
It is easy to read this as a story about buildings and electricity, and for the companies building them it is. For an employer it is a story about where demand for skilled people is about to concentrate, and what that does to salaries in the areas next door.
The wage premium on AI skills is already measurable. Regions that get zones will pull harder on the same pool of people that Lancashire and Greater Manchester employers recruit from. The employers who come out of that well are the ones who build the capability inside their existing teams rather than competing for it on the open market.
Sources: UK government AI Growth Zones announcements, January 2025 to January 2026, as summarised by Computer Weekly.