Data Based

Big things are coming to Dagenham East, with the former Sanofi pharmaceutical site set for a huge transformation over the next few years. What will this mean for the borough? Sarah Herbert investigates.

The former Sanofi site was one of Dagenham’s major employers, with more than 4,500 staff at its peak. Exciting developments promise a return to similar levels as a range of new industries will soon be based there.

The site has a long and distinguished history. Originally home to the Wilkins family of Tiptree jams fame, it was bought by May and Baker in the 1930s, and became a major chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing and production facility, stretching to over 108 acres. By 2009, May and Baker had become Sanofi, and the decision was made to shift production overseas and to close the Dagenham site. Sanofi finally left in 2013, but was determined to leave a legacy and thus sowed the seeds for the current plans for the area’s regeneration.

Having donated over 50 acres of sports fields and the May and Baker Social Club to a local community trust, Sanofi sold a major part of the site to AXA, and the front 10 acres to a supermarket chain. Subsequently, Barking and Dagenham Council bought the supermarket site and two-thirds of the AXA holding. The remaining one-third of the AXA holding, on the eastern side of the site, is where a data centre is being built, by owner NTT Communications. Such large-scale data hosting infrastructure is critical for sectors such as digital media or cloud computing, so will support east London’s emerging technological industries, and make the borough the digital hub of the capital. Occupying a site of 55,000sq m, the hyperscale data centre will open for business in the summer of this year. The flexible and scalable campus, offering wholesale and retail collocation as well as hybrid IT, will also include an innovation test lab facility for customers, service providers and partners.

The buildings are huge. Two data centres of 212m long, 70m wide and 24m high will contain 24,000sq m of IT space and 60MW IT load once fully-developed, and 2,000sq m of back office space. There will also be a single-storey gatehouse, and a dedicated sub-station. Both data centre buildings and the gatehouse will have rooftop PV cells, which together will generate up to 1.75MWh from almost 4,000 cells, making it the capital’s largest new bespoke rooftop array in the capital.

Developed by NTT subsidiary e-Centre, the project – known as UK London 1 Data Centre – will include operator Gyron, and be connected by dark fibre to the five existing Gyron data centres in Hemel Hempstead and Slough, offering a networked London operating platform capable of supporting over 100MW of IT load. Rupprecht Rittweger, CEO of e-shelter and Gyron, says: “London is a major global data centre market and this development is driven by continued demand from our customers and partners.” The remaining 17 acres of the Sanofi site, containing the last of the major production and laboratory buildings, was developed into one of east London’s primary business and technical parks, Londoneast-UK. The business park was bought in January 2019 by the BD Group, Barking and Dagenham Council’s trading company, which is investing massively in the site and attracting a range of exciting new organisations. Already supporting 47 individual businesses, Londoneast-UK is fast becoming a major hub for universities seeking new facilities.

A computer generated image of the planned data centre.

First of these is the PEARL research laboratory, being built on part of the site sold by BD Group to University College London. PEARL (Person-Environment- Activity Research Laboratory) will be at the cutting-edge of research into the movement of people through global transportation networks. Planning permission was granted last November for a building 115m long and 40m wide, comprising an open laboratory space of 3,600sq m, workshops, meeting rooms, a sound laboratory, a ‘maker space’ and working spaces. In the laboratory space, Professor Nick Tyler and his 100-strong team of research staff, students, technicians and administration staff will recreate different life-size environments – such as streets, squares, stations, airport terminals, or even some aspects of natural environments – to investigate how people respond in every way to different aspects of environment design, such as lighting, sound/acoustics, smell and visibility, as well as its physical properties. The laboratory space will be able to simulate anything from starlight to bright sunlight, and create sounds of all volumes and ‘move’ them around the space, with the acoustic properties of anything from a small room to a large cathedral. Tyler says: “It can even introduce smells into the space, or change the visibility, for example reduce it down to a few centimetres, as in a fog.”

Designs for UCL's PEARL research laboratory.

So why did UCL choose Dagenham East for such a facility? Says Tyler: “At the technical level, we needed a site that was close to public transport - especially the Underground - and flat enough to have a building of such a size on a reasonably flat site. It also had to be sufficiently far away from housing that the occasional arrival of 500 participants for the ‘big’ experiments would not be disruptive to local residents, but near enough to the local community that we could develop a good working relationship. Having found the site in Dagenham that met these technical needs, we are really happy to be in a location with such an energised local authority, and where we feel that we can build up the relationships with local people and organisations.

“It is very important to us that we listen to their needs and challenges of the community, not only so that we can keep our scientific work relevant, but also so that we can explain to people - including local school students - what we do, what engineering and science really are and what a university can mean to everyone.” PEARL will be UCL’s first net zero carbon building, offsetting all carbon emissions in both areas of construction and operation.

The final set of exciting plans for the site is for London’s biggest film studios. New designs for the studios were unveiled in March when a planning application was put forward by Be First, Barking and Dagenham Council’s regeneration arm. The plans include six large sound stages, offices and workshops, designed to high environmental standards.

Council leader Darren Rodwell says: “This is the next exciting stage in our ambition to build the largest studios in London for 25 years.” There’s no doubt the demand is there. Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, says: “UK film and high-end TV production contributes billions to the economy each year, and it is crucial that we capitalise on this by continuing to develop our world-class infrastructure and provide access to as much purpose built studio space as we possibly can.

“Our highly attractive tax reliefs remain unaffected by Brexit so for international productions coming to the UK it’s very much business as usual. We’re continuing to see a huge demand by major studios looking for the stability and security of a UK production base.” So what does it all mean for the borough? According to Pat Hayes, who is managing director of Be First: “The studio development will over the next few years create thousands of new jobs both directly and indirectly, while the presence of the data centre, PEARL and business space means the site as a whole will bring together digital, creative, industry and education.”