A council has today given planning consent to develop Europe's largest data centre, situated on the outskirts of Lockerbie.

Dumfries & Galloway Council has granted the scheme planning in principle and it no longer needs referral to Scottish Ministers, meaning that work to construct one of the largest data centres in the world will likely begin onsite next year.

Lockerbie Data Centres Ltd, are the developers behind the scheme.

The consent will allow LDC to actively follow up on previous expressions of interest from investors and potential end users.

The £950 million project will attract more than £3.5 billion in inward investment, creating c. 3,000 jobs during its five to ten year construction phase.

In addition to the proposed 250,000 sq.m. data centre, the development will include a new business park providing around 18,000 sq. m. of hi-tech office space. The aim of this is to attract internet companies to the area, creating up to 900 new jobs. Adjacent to the business park will be a horticultural research and commercial greenhouses park that will bring an additional 90 jobs.

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The data centre itself will create 50 jobs with another 10 jobs for estate management.

In addition to the jobs associated with the development of the site and permanent staff, hundreds of additional jobs will be created in the local area through the data centre project.

A data centre is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Increasingly businesses and public sector organisations are moving these facilities out of their offices and into separate purpose-built data centres where the equipment is maintained under optimum conditions and managed by specialists.

Organisations that relocate their data centre will be able to declare significant carbon reductions as well as making major cost savings.

The project is an environmentally sensitive development that will look at recycling excess energy from the data centre for use in local facilities. Around half of the power required will come from local wind farms and a bio-mass plant.

Furthermore, the colder climate means less energy is needed to cool the system and this is why Scotland is ideally placed, with the scale of these centres meaning that moving somewhere a couple of degrees cooler can equate to a significant saving over the lifetime of the building.

These lower energy costs, combined with land prices and building costs could potentially result in an average saving of 30-50% in the operation of a data centre, compared to elsewhere in the UK. The project will supply business centres with fast and efficient broadband services.

David King, Project Director of Lockerbie Data Centres Ltd said: "We are delighted to be given the green light for one of the most exciting projects currently taking place in Scotland.

"This is a major enterprise programme that will be of considerable benefit, not only to Dumfries and Galloway, but to the whole of Scotland and parts of the north of England, creating thousands of jobs.

"Feedback from the local community has been extremely positive and this development will put Dumfries and Galloway firmly on the map as world leaders in data centre provision."

(GK/BMcC)