People In East Cardiff Don’t Want A Huge Data Centre Built In Their Backyard
While Wales suffers from unprecedented wildfires and a climate crisis, Cardiff Council is looking to scrap Heath Hospital’s Park and Ride service and build a data centre in its place. Locals are up in arms, and overwhelmingly rejecting the plans. O Kour reports.
Words and images by O Kour. Cover image: residents and activist protest against the Data Centre outside a recent Cardiff Council meeting.
Wales is burning. Thick smoke hangs in the air, drifting for tens of miles as hundreds of hectares of the country’s green landscapes go up in flames.
As smoke from the Blaenavon wildfires reached as far as Cardiff, bringing an ashy haze down to the capital, residents from Llanrumney and neighbouring communities packed Cardiff County Hall to demand that the council abandon plans for a new data centre on a vital public site.
The Cardiff and Vale NHS Board currently operates a free Park and Ride service from Cardiff East to University Hospital Wales. Around 1,000 people use it every day, including NHS staff, patients and visitors.
A proposal submitted by Curtis Hall Limited to Cardiff Council would see the existing Park and Ride facility demolished and replaced with a 40-acre artificial intelligence (AI) data centre campus comprising three data centres, an energy centre, an on-site substation and ancillary buildings.
Speaking to voice.cymru, local resident Rhos McMahon said, “We do not want this data centre, and we sure as hell don’t want them scrapping the Park and Ride, which is an asset for people accessing healthcare.”
Rhos, who is disabled and regularly relies on the service, was attending a protest organised by the community union ACORN, who initially launched the campaign “It’s a twenty-minute bus ride. It’s free, people don’t have to pay for it. If I didn’t have that service, it would be maybe an hour’s bus ride just to get to the Heath hospital,” she says.
Rhos is one of many residents objecting to the proposal. Official documents reveal that, over the past six months, more than 2,600 people have signed a petition calling for the plans to be scrapped.
The authority has also received at least 30 formal objections from residents, healthcare workers and Members of the Senedd, including Green Party MS Paul Rock, and Plaid Cymru MSs Dafydd Trystan Davies, Zaynub Akbar and Nick Carter.
Residents, along with members of ACORN, have also taken their objections directly to Cardiff Council. Two protests took place in July, during which councillors abruptly left the meeting and locked themselves inside the Council Chamber to avoid further confrontation.
Rhos is worried that the development would disproportionately affect the most vulnerable residents. “The danger to people’s health and well-being is insurmountable. You’ve got the psychological effects of having a data centre — that noise, we are not meant to be bombarded with that. They are spitting in the face of people who are just trying to get by and putting their health at risk.”
Another Llanrumney resident, Cerys*, said she was “horrified” to learn of the proposal, only becoming aware of it in early July. She says, “A lot of my neighbours are in their 60s–70s, and having a free Park and Ride service for patients, visitors and also staff — which I’ve used myself — is fantastic, and really needs to be kept.
“We as a city are supposed to be reducing car emissions and pollution. If you’re getting rid of a Park and Ride, where’s the sense in that? Having also lived near the hospital, I know how difficult it is to park there. So we need our Park and Ride. It needs to be promoted and advertised rather than closed.”
Cerys argues that there has been little to no consultation with the general public or community members who would be most impacted. According to the Pre-Application Consultation Report, only five A4-sized site notices were placed on lampposts for 28 days in December 2025. Just over 100 letters were sent to nearby addresses, alongside a few Facebook posts and the launch of a consultation website. No public meetings or discussions were held, considering that December is a festive season when many people are away.
The pre-application consultation report also stated that the Park and Ride “is not subject to a formal arrangement and is not actively maintained,” but that “alternative sites for a Park and Ride facility to service University Hospital Wales are under consideration by Cardiff Council and Health Board.” However, no potential replacements have been brought to light as of yet.
For Cerys, the consequences of the proposed data centre extend far beyond the loss of the Park and Ride service. “We’ll end up paying for that [data centre], and a lot of people in those areas are not wealthy, so how are they going to afford that?” She also fears the development would take away a valuable space for students to socialise. “As an ex-teacher, I know there are a lot of schools near the Pentwyn roundabout where the Park and Ride is. Teachers like to take the kids out to play and have lessons outside. They won’t be able to do that with this noise, this horrible sound will cause a lot of mental health issues. The list is endless. It’s horrendous. We need to stop it.”
Data centres emit a low-frequency hum from cooling systems and fans, which can be heard hundreds of feet from the site. Research has found that prolonged exposure can leave those in proximity at risk of chronic sleep deprivation or insomnia, headaches, ear pain and anxiety.
Rhos says, “It’s not lost on me that [Llanrumney] is an economically deprived area. I just think it’s diabolical. We pay [the council] to do their job, this comes out of our pockets. And as a thank you, they’re going, ‘Have this data centre, it’ll ruin your life.’”
On a wider scale, they can be ecologically destructive. Data centres are among the most energy-intensive forms of infrastructure, creating a heat island effect that can not only push surrounding temperatures up by as much as nine degrees, but also drain valuable resources from the communities they are thrust upon.
They are also water-guzzling, and use approximately 6.6 million litres of water on a daily basis. The proposed site in Llanrumney, which is within an area at risk of flooding, is expected to consume up to 600,000 litres of water per day. Not only will it put severe strain on energy resources and water infrastructure, but also result in poorer air quality and a loss of vital transport links. By replacing the free hospital Park and Ride service with a resource-intensive data centre, Cardiff Council risks undermining its own vision of a ‘stronger, fairer, greener’ city.
It’s not too late for things to change, though. The official consultation will end on 26 August, after which a decision will be made for or against the application to scrap the Park and Ride.
Rhos says, “Despite the council’s efforts to ignore us, we, the residents, we, their constituents who allow them the positions that they have, will not be put aside.”
*Name changed to maintain anonymity.
