Data Centers in Manchester

Manchester – The UK’s Resilient Northern Hub

Executive Summary

Manchester is a premier UK digital hub for businesses that require a strong national presence outside of London. Its dense connectivity and exceptionally low natural disaster risk make it the logical choice for deploying resilient infrastructure and disaster recovery sites, directly supporting uptime and service continuity for UK operations.

Manchester: At A Glance

Network & Connectivity Ecosystem

Manchester's connectivity is reliable and diverse, making it a critical hub for traffic exchange and content delivery across the northern UK. The market is mature, with 28 facilities from over 20 providers, as of September 2025.

Carrier Density & Carrier Neutrality The market features a healthy ecosystem of over 20 unique network providers, as of September 2025. Numerous carrier-neutral facilities provide competitive options for creating redundant, high-performance networks.

Direct Cloud On-Ramps With over 1 dedicated on-ramp available, as of September 2025, Manchester offers direct, low-latency connections to major cloud platforms. This includes private access to AWS, enabling hybrid cloud architectures that perform reliably.

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) The city is home to IXManchester, a key regional internet exchange. Peering at this IXP significantly improves traffic routing efficiency and reduces latency for users across the North of England.

Bare Metal Bare metal server options are readily available from multiple providers in Manchester. Companies like Hivelocity offer dedicated server solutions for workloads requiring maximum performance and control.

Power Analysis

Power infrastructure in Manchester is stable and built to support the region's significant industrial and digital economic activity.

Average Cost Of Power Industrial power costs average around £0.17/kWh, as of September 2025. This competitive rate, combined with grid stability, helps ensure predictable operational costs for compute-intensive deployments.

Power Grid Reliability The power grid serving Manchester's primary data center zones is well-engineered and highly reliable. Facilities are typically supported by redundant power feeds from multiple substations, ensuring high levels of uptime.

Market Access, Business & Tax Climate

Proximity To Key Business Districts Data centers in Manchester are strategically located to serve the city's thriving digital, media, and financial sectors. This proximity provides low-latency connectivity to business districts and hubs like MediaCityUK.

Regional Market Reach Manchester is the ideal location for serving the northern half of the UK, including major population centers in the Midlands, North England, and Scotland. It provides an effective low-latency footprint for reaching millions of end-users.

Tax Advantage For Data Centers The UK does not offer specific tax incentives for data centers. The primary financial advantage comes from the country's stable corporate tax environment and Manchester's strategic value, which can lower total cost of ownership through operational efficiencies.

Natural Disaster Risk

Manchester has a very low natural disaster risk profile, with an INFORM Risk score of 2.1 out of 10, as of September 2025. This makes it an exceptionally safe location for deploying critical IT infrastructure.

The area's primary environmental hazards are minimal and well-understood:

• River Flood: The most notable risk, though modern flood defenses and careful data center siting mitigate the threat.
• Drought: A minor consideration with minimal impact on data center operations.
• Epidemic: A national-level risk factored into the country's overall score.

Risks from earthquakes and tropical cyclones are negligible. The city's inland location eliminates any direct threat from tsunamis or coastal flooding.