UK gov report to propose special zones for datacenters, 'AI visas'

UK government is to recommend streamlining the visa process for those with AI skills and the creation of special zones where it will be easier to build datacenters and any infrastructure they depend on.

A commissioned report, sent to the administration last month and due to be officially published in November, contains a number of recommendations to help advance Britain's tech sector, including making the country a more attractive destination for those with AI expertise.

According to the Financial Times, this "AI Opportunities Action Plan" was written by tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford, appointed in July by the new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle as an advisor to identify ways to boost Britian's AI sector.

One of the areas of concern among current industry chiefs is said to be the "lengthy bureaucracy" and cost involved in hiring skilled people from abroad, and so smoothing the visa process is expected to be one of the recommendations.

Almost as if by coincidence, this is exactly the same message that former Google chief Eric Schmidt delivered to Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a debate at the government's International Investment Summit in London earlier this month.

The US already has a similar program.

The Google supremo urged the PM to expand high-skilled immigration, pointing out that a lot of "incredibly smart people" are now graduating with AI qualifications, and the UK should be encouraging them to come here. How well this would sit with the ruling Labour party's avowed determination to reduce immigration remains to be seen.

Another proposal highlighted by the FT is the creation of "computing zones," within which it would be easier to build datacenters and any infrastructure they depend on, presumably power and communications connections.

Datacenters seem to have already become a preoccupation for this government, which was elected just three months ago. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle designated them as critical national infrastructure (CNI) in September, giving the sector greater government support in recovering from incidents and "greater reassurance when setting up business in the UK."

As The Register already disclosed, this means they are no longer subject to the same planning restrictions as before, meaning that developers will largely be able to override objections to such facilities being built in a particular area.

What "computing zones" might add to this mix is anyone's guess right now, although we would bet on it including a recommendation for bit barns in such areas to be given priority status when it comes to getting power and data connections sorted.

Access to power has become one of the major limiting factors constraining datacenter construction over recent years, as The Register has covered variously. Just this week, the head of a major UK commercial property developer said this was holding back his company from investing "hundreds of millions" in new bit barn builds.

However, as David Mytton of the University of Oxford noted in a blog, datacenters in Britain have become highly concentrated in West London and the M4 motorway corridor due to "the proximity of fiber-optic cables that run undersea from North America making landfall in Cornwall and then travelling to London along that route."

This has already caused issues, with reports of delays to housing projects in West London because of datacenters using up all the available energy, with upgrades to the transmission network not due to be completed until the end of the decade.

Mytton wrote that "managing capacity is clearly an area where policy can be improved," and that "a collaborative effort among datacenter operators, regulators, grid operators, and local planning authorities will be imperative to harmonize the diverse interests and accelerate the necessary infrastructural and regulatory reforms."

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But if government policy becomes prioritization of datacenters above all else, residents of designated "computing zones" may find that any other concerns, such as building much-needed new housing, have to take a back seat.

A spokesperson for DSIT told us:

"Matt Clifford's AI Opportunities Action Plan will set out an ambitious vision for how the UK can use the technology to ramp-up adoption across the economy, kickstart growth, and build an AI sector which can scale and compete on the global stage. We will set out our response in due course." ®