Minister Says Deindustrialised Areas Could Benefit Most From New AI Zones
4 min read
Deindustrialised parts of the country could benefit the most from government plans to accelerate growth in Artificial Intelligence, a technology minister has told PoliticsHome.
The Labour government is establishing ‘AI growth zones’ across the UK, described as designated areas where planning approval for developments such as new data centres will be fast-tracked.
Feryal Clark, the minister for AI and Digital Government, told PoliticsHome that she hopes deindustrialised areas, where local economies have generally struggled in recent decades, will be the ones to benefit the most from these plans.
The government will announce the hosts of these zones this summer, with more than 200 investors and local authorities having submitted expressions of interest.
Proposals will be assessed on a set of criteria, including whether potential sites already have or have plans to establish access to large power connections of at least 500MW – enough energy to power 2m homes.
Clark said the government wants “spades in the ground” by the end of this year – but the government will be acting only as a “convening power” rather than contributing investment itself.
“It's a partnership between regions – local authorities or regional combined authorities – with a university or the private sector, who put forward proposals to host data centres, and the government will play an enabler role,” said the Labour MP for Enfield North.
Earlier this year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced plans to boost the tech industry in the ‘Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor’, which she said has the “potential to be Europe’s Silicon Valley”.
However, with many areas of the country in the North and Midlands heading to the polls in the local elections on Thursday, this has raised questions as to whether post-industrial regions could be left behind in the UK’s technology race.
Despite the first ‘AI growth zone’ having already been confirmed as Culham in Oxfordshire, home to the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority, Clark insisted the ‘growth zones’ would spread further afield.
“We looked at how we ensure every part of the country gets the benefit from this technology,” she said.
“These applications are from all over the country, from as far up as Scotland to Wales, and everywhere in between. We are getting a lot of applications from those which are former deindustrialised areas, where their industries closed down.
“You've got huge unemployment, but you've still got access to energy and the land ready to put the shovels in the ground really quickly.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking about AI late last year (Alamy)
Describing the construction of new data centres as “very energy-hungry technology”, Clark said areas where there used to be former coal fields and heavy industry could be those most likely to meet the energy source criteria.
However, Clark said that every ‘AI growth zone’ will “look very different”, making the success of this initiative quite difficult to measure in the coming years.
Asked what tangible benefit residents of these areas will see by the end of this Parliament, Clark said that they will “see the data centre, see new high-skilled jobs, and the regeneration of those towns and areas that have been deindustrialised”.
“They've been abandoned over the years,” she said.
The 2019 Conservative Party manifesto promised to “level up” the entire country and reduce inequalities between the best and worst-performing regional economies.
This policy has since been widely viewed as a failure, and the Future of Work (IFOW) think tank warned last year that the rapid rollout of generative AI and automation was “profoundly skewed” towards the “golden triangle” of Oxford, Cambridge and London, and therefore risked deepening regional inequalities.
Clark insisted that the Labour government was taking a different approach, which she described as more “collaborative” and “working with areas rather than doing things to them”.
“We’ve always been very, very clear on what levelling up our communities will look like,” she said.
“It's just that the last government didn't listen and they weren't interested in levelling up.”
