Edinburgh could be about to get a brand-new data centre, with real estate investment firm Shelborn Asset Management, alongside StudioNWA Architects, now consulting on plans for a campus on the former site of the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters. 

The original buildings on the site were constructed in 1993 and spanned 330,000 sq ft (30,660 sqm) across roughly 18.5 acres. They were sold to Shelborn Asset Management in 2021 and demolished in 2022 following NatWest staff’s relocation to Gogarburn, a large office building nearby in Gogar, Edinburgh.

It was expected that an office would be built on the site, but given the decline in demand for office space in a post-Covid world, the developer of the site has decided to pivot. That’s why it’s now running a public consultation on whether to construct two data centre buildings of different sizes, plus a new substation on the site. It’s not known what capacity the data centre will have, however. 

It’s quite a pivot for the site, which had already secured planning permission last year for the mixed-use Edinburgh Green scheme totalling around 800,000 sq ft (74,320 sqm) across six multi-storey blocks.

A new data centre would be welcome in Edinburgh, however. The glut of renewables available in Scotland makes it an ideal location for data centres looking to get access to an abundance of power, although it’s still rare to see new data centres proposed for the area. 

When Shelbourn Drummond will be able to get its new data centre constructed is anyone’s guess as the developer has yet to provide expected timelines, although it is hoping to receive planning consent by early next year. It has also confirmed that whatever data centre is built, it’ll adhere to the ‘Green Data Centre’ criteria as laid out in the National Planning Framework 4.