Amazon has filed to develop a new data center outside London, UK.

First reported by the Watford Observer, an application has been filed with Dacorum Borough Council to develop a data center in Hemel Hempstead, a town in Hertfordshire.

Amazon Data Services is the applicant’s listed company name.

The application seeks to build a new facility at Plot 3 on Maylands Avenue in the town’s Maylands Business Park industrial area. The company aims to develop a single two-story data center on the site totaling around 1,935 sqm (20,840 sq ft).

The facility will primarily host tape storage systems, according to the filing, leading to lower power and water requirements than other facilities of similar size.

“This data center will be a data repository, which requires significantly less power consumption than typical data centers,” the filing notes. “This building will be designed to house tape media that provides a long-term data storage solution for customers.”

The facility will feature chilled-water cooling systems, relying on free-cooling for the majority of the year. A small 8.55kW solar system is planned on the site. The company will use HVO to power the backup generators.

The 0.6-hectare plot was formerly used as a Post Office government storage depot. The site was cleared in the early 2010s and has been underutilised and vacant since. Another data center site is located on the opposite side of the street.

NTT operates several data centers around Hemel Hempstead, including in the Maylands park. Last year, real estate investor Northtree Investment filed to redevelop a self-storage site into a data center in the business park.

Previous filings suggest Amazon has a presence in the area, at 3A Blossom Way.

Amazon Web Services currently has one UK cloud region located in the Bristol area (though it is named as 'London') that launched in 2016.

The company announced plans to invest £8bn (then $10.47bn) in UK data centers over five years in 2024. The new proposed development would form part of that £8bn investment, according to application documents.

The firm is linked to several other developments across the UK, including Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire; Hayes, Middlesex; Didcot, Oxfordshire; Swindon, Wiltshire; Bracknell, Berkshire; and Iver, Buckinghamshire.