A £10bn artificial intelligence hub championed by Sir Keir Starmer for creating thousands of new jobs could boast just 300 full-time staff once completed, it has emerged.
The vast data centre project in Northumberland, announced by the Prime Minister last week, will lead to only 300 to 400 permanent staff employed at the site instead of the 4,000 roles indicated by its financial backers.
Labour has planned to make building data centres a key plank of its plans to attract investment and technology companies to Britain.
However, while the facilities are critical to high-performance computing and storage, their economic impact has been questioned due to the relatively low number of people they employ.
Sir Keir announced the new data centre, set to be housed on the site of a former coal yard, during a visit to New York last week.
The site’s developer Blackstone, the US private equity giant, has said the project will consist of up to 10 data centre buildings and create 4,000 jobs.
However documents related to the proposals show that the majority – 2,700 – of the jobs will be “indirect” and not employed by the project itself. Around 1,200 will be temporary construction roles, although building work will take several years.
Blackstone is expected to say at a local council meeting this week that between 300 and 400 jobs will be permanent. Planning documents show that the site will have between 40 and 50 parking spaces for each of the 10 buildings on site.
The site in Blyth was formerly owned by Britishvolt, the doomed gigafactory project, before the company collapsed last year. Britishvolt had pledged to create 3,000 jobs on the site.
Ian Lavery, the local MP, has questioned how many full time jobs the site will create.
“The American experience certainly seems to be that data centres owned and operated by global technology giants built in low-cost, non-urban areas create few long term jobs, but offer an upfront financial benefit for local authorities,” he said.
Local governments have sought to attract data centres as a way of reviving local economies, especially in areas where power and water is plentiful, while infrastructure companies promise billions in investment. However, the majority of the spending is typically in the initial set-up of the sites.
Data centres themselves often employ a few dozen technical roles, with surrounding jobs in areas such as security and cleaning. The Government has recently classed them as critical national infrastructure, giving them the same protections as utilities such as water and electricity networks.
Sir Keir met Jon Gray, Blackstone’s president, in New York last week. However, the Prime Minister’s staff accidentally posted a picture of himself with Larry Fink, the boss of separate company BlackRock.
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