Castleforge and Galaxy Data Centres have won planning consent to expand their Redhill data centre campus near London, including a new 15MW facility.

The project is part of a broader expansion at the campus, where the partners have already invested more than GBP £100 million. They now plan a further GBP £200 million investment, taking the gross project value to about GBP £500 million.

Site details

The approved scheme will add a two-storey data centre with four data halls and an office block on the existing 3.1-hectare Foxboro Business Park estate. The site sits just outside London, where operators and investors have been seeking land and power as available capacity tightens.

The development will support a local waste heat recovery initiative. Waste heat from the facility will be reused on site, and the design allows for future export to a neighbouring residential heat network.

Market pressure

The expansion comes as the London data centre market faces growing pressure on supply. London remains Europe’s largest data centre market and the world’s second largest after Northern Virginia. Vacancy has fallen sharply in recent years as demand for colocation space has risen.

Figures cited by the partners show colocation vacancy in London falling from 21.3% in the first quarter of 2021 to 7.4% by the fourth quarter of 2025. They also pointed to estimates showing 302MW of capacity in London’s pipeline, even as development constraints around the capital make new schemes harder to bring forward.

Demand for data centre space around London has been driven by growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and hybrid workloads. Operators have also sought sites with reliable power access and strong connectivity to established hubs such as Slough and Docklands.

The Redhill campus currently spans 11,800 square metres across three buildings and serves customers including Fortune 500 businesses in financial services, artificial intelligence and other sectors.

For Castleforge, the scheme adds to a portfolio focused on the built environment. For Galaxy, it reflects the growing role of specialist operators and advisers in a market where access to power, planning and operational expertise is becoming increasingly important. The borough council’s planning committee approved the application.

Executive view

Mike Adcock, Head of Investments, Castleforge, said the approval marked an important step for the project.

“Securing planning consent for our new development at Redhill is a major milestone in our plans to deliver high-quality, sustainable digital infrastructure to one of the world’s most important data centre markets.

Demand for capacity in and around London continues to outpace supply, and this consent enables us to bring forward the additional power and scale required to serve enterprise, hyperscale and edge customers. We are particularly proud of the project’s sustainability credentials, including the potential to export waste heat to local homes, which reflects our commitment to creating places that deliver lasting value for both customers and the surrounding community,” said Adcock.

Paul Leong, Chief Financial Officer and Partner, Galaxy Data Centres, said the approval was central to the partners’ plans for the site.

“This planning consent is a pivotal step in realising the long-term vision we set out when we acquired Redhill alongside Castleforge.

The new facility will significantly expand the capacity available to our customers and ensure Redhill is positioned to meet the evolving needs of edge, hyperscale and enterprise users. We are proud to be delivering a development that combines operational excellence with meaningful sustainability outcomes, and we look forward to bringing the project forward in close collaboration with the local community,” said Leong.

The project has been designed to achieve a BREEAM rating of Very Good and includes low- and zero-carbon technologies. Those features are likely to carry weight in a market where local authorities, communities and customers are paying closer attention to the environmental impact of data centre development.

Redhill’s appeal rests partly on its proximity to London without being in the most constrained central locations. With available land and power around core metropolitan areas under pressure, outer hubs and established campuses have become more attractive to investors looking to expand near major demand centres.

The approval gives Castleforge and Galaxy a route to increase capacity at a campus with operating buildings and existing customers, at a time when operators across Europe are competing for scarce development opportunities.

Many organisations do not have a full view of their external attack surface, according to DarkInvader, which links that gap to the way attackers now search for internet-facing weaknesses.

Its analysis found that 43% of UK businesses suffered a cyber breach or attack over the past year, rising to 69% among large organisations. It argues that many security teams still lack full visibility of internet-facing assets, even as phishing, credential exposure and externally exploitable vulnerabilities continue to increase.

The issue centres on the growing complexity of corporate technology estates. Cloud infrastructure, application programming interfaces, third-party integrations and rapidly deployed services have increased the number of systems that sit outside traditional network boundaries.

As these environments expand, assets can be created, changed or abandoned without being properly recorded or secured. That can leave unknown subdomains, exposed services, misconfigured cloud assets and leaked credentials outside the scope of internal monitoring.

This has changed how many attackers approach their targets. Rather than trying to break through internal defences directly, they can scan public-facing systems and data to identify potential entry points without alerting conventional tools.

In practice, an organisation may invest heavily in internal protection while still leaving a route open through systems it does not know it has. Initial access is often gained through assets that sit beyond the view of established security controls.

External focus

The shift has helped drive interest in External Attack Surface Management, or EASM, which aims to give organisations a continuous external view of their digital footprint. The approach focuses on identifying internet-facing assets and monitoring them for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and other risks.

Unlike more traditional security models, EASM is designed around the perspective of an outside attacker. That means focusing not only on known systems, but also on assets that have been forgotten, deployed informally or introduced through suppliers and other third parties.

The problem is not simply one of technology spending. More broadly, DarkInvader argues, organisations have historically concentrated on protecting internal environments and responding to known vulnerabilities, while the current threat landscape demands a wider understanding of external exposure.

That shift reflects the wider spread of digital services across modern businesses. Companies now operate through a mix of internal systems, cloud services, public-facing applications and outside partners, making it harder to maintain a single accurate inventory of what is exposed to the internet.

Changing priorities

Security teams need to move from a reactive model to continuous exposure management, the company argues. In practice, that means understanding what attackers can see, identifying gaps in coverage and ranking risks according to how likely they are to be exploited in the real world.

Without that external view, even well-funded teams may be working from an incomplete picture of their own environment. The result can be a mismatch between where defensive tools are deployed and where attackers are actually looking.

DarkInvader describes its platform as an EASM service that provides visibility across internet-facing assets. It is designed to discover and map an organisation’s digital footprint, including unknown and unmanaged assets, and monitor them for vulnerabilities and changes.

The platform also examines open-source intelligence, dark web data and other external signals to identify issues such as exposed credentials, misconfigurations and supplier-related threats. That reflects a broader industry trend towards combining asset discovery with ongoing monitoring of the wider online environment around an organisation.

DarkInvader expects the attack surface management market to expand as digital environments become more complex and businesses seek better visibility into external risks. Its central argument is that understanding an organisation’s full external presence is becoming a core part of cyber defence rather than a specialist add-on.

Organisations must now account for assets they do not directly control and, in some cases, may not even know exist. In DarkInvader’s view, the ability to see and manage that full attack surface is increasingly the difference between preventing a breach and discovering it after the fact.

VIOOH has partnered with Abode Media to add the residential digital out-of-home network to its programmatic marketplace, expanding its reach across premium housing locations in the UK.

Abode Media operates more than 250 screens in over 230 residential buildings across London, Manchester and Birmingham. The network delivers more than 60 million monthly impressions and focuses on interior screens in high-traffic areas of premium residential properties.

The agreement gives advertisers using VIOOH access to inventory in apartment and residential buildings, a part of the out-of-home market that remains less developed than traditional roadside, retail and transit formats. Positioned to reach residents as they leave home and return, the screens offer repeated exposure during daily routines.

Residential media has attracted advertisers looking for new ways to reach affluent urban audiences in settings with less competition for attention than public spaces. Abode Media’s estate is concentrated in higher-value buildings and is designed to reach consumers where they are likely to see messages at the start and end of the day.

The partnership adds central London coverage and broadens the range of locations available through VIOOH’s trading platform. VIOOH operates in 37 markets and works with more than 50 demand-side platforms globally, giving media buyers access to digital out-of-home inventory through automated transactions.

Residential expansion

The addition of Abode Media reflects a wider move in digital out-of-home towards more specialised, venue-based networks. As more advertisers shift spending to programmatic buying, operators of smaller or more targeted estates are seeking distribution through larger marketplaces that connect them to agency and trading desk demand.

For Abode Media, the partnership provides access to buyers using programmatic tools to plan and book campaigns across multiple screen networks. That could make residential inventory easier to include in broader out-of-home and omnichannel media plans, particularly for campaigns aimed at urban consumers with higher spending power.

Abode Media describes residential buildings as a proximity channel that can support brand and purchase messaging close to moments of decision-making. It also says the format allows advertising to sit alongside building communications and community messaging in shared spaces.

Its footprint in London, Manchester and Birmingham gives the network a presence in three of the UK’s largest out-of-home advertising markets. Interior screens in residential settings differ from many traditional formats because they are viewed by a recurring audience rather than passers-by alone, potentially increasing frequency for advertisers seeking regular contact with the same households.

Market access

Programmatic digital out-of-home has become a larger part of the media buying mix as advertisers seek flexibility in planning, targeting and activation. Supply-side platforms such as VIOOH act as intermediaries between media owners and buyers, making inventory available through automated systems rather than solely through direct sales.

In the UK, that shift has brought a wider range of screen types into programmatic trading, from transport hubs and shopping centres to gyms, offices and residential blocks. The partnership with Abode Media adds another venue type to that mix as media owners try to demonstrate the value of more context-specific placements.

Gavin Wilson outlined the rationale for the deal. “Our partnership with Abode Media represents further expansion of our programmatic marketplace, offering brands access to premium central London locations through a uniquely agile and flexible media owner. Its strategic coverage provides advertisers with exceptional opportunities to reach diverse London-centric and internationally travelling audiences. Its new-generation approach to flexibility and responsiveness perfectly complements VIOOH’s real-time trading capabilities,” said Gavin Wilson, Global Chief Commercial Officer, VIOOH.

James Withers outlined Abode Media’s view of the opportunity in residential screens. “We’re very excited by our new partnership with VIOOH, which opens up genuine possibilities for brands to connect with a unique audience in premium locations. Our screens are situated at a key priming location for brands to take advantage of an audience engaging in multiple lifestyle activities. They are the first and final OOH messages seen each day by our residents, or at important moments of craving, decision-making and active shopping,” said James Withers, Head of Agency Sales, Abode Media.