British digital retailer Shop Direct has filed a letter calling for board members to refuse planning permission for two buildings in the center of Liverpool, due to fears that construction could put the company’s data center operations at risk.
Dust and vibrations
The company claims that dust, vibrations and “any disruption to the power and data lines beneath Black Leeds Street which serve the data center” would “be disastrous to its business,” stating that “no explanation has been provided as to how these would be protected during the construction phase.” The company states that 5,600 jobs rely on “the continued and uninterrupted operation of the data center.”
The two towers, Ovatus 1 and 2 - which, if approved, will respectively be 27 and 48 stories high, making the latter the city’s first skyscraper - have already received the necessary funding for construction and secured pre-sales on all the apartments. Developers are simply waiting to obtain planning permission to begin the work.
Shop Direct is an amalgamation of the former 1920s football betting company turned retailer, Littlewoods, the home division of the Great Universal Stores which split in 2006 and Kay and Co, a late 19th century mail-order catalogue business. It is owned by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, the owners of the Telegraph Media Group.
The company launched Very.co.uk in 2009, an online retail company directed at women, merging Isme, KandCo and Woolworths’ online stores, the rights to which were bought by Shop Direct when Woolworths went into administration in 2008.
In 2016, Shop Direct registered 2.4 percent year-on-year growth, reaching £1bn ($1.24bn) in annual revenue. This was despite having made a loss on Littlewoods following the discontinuation of the sales catalogue and transferring the business to an “online only” platform.
It was all part of the plan
The business partners behind Ovatus 1 and 2, Martin Wilcocks and Craig Blackwell, purchased the building which holds the Shop Direct data center in December last year, stating they were keen to pursue development plans in the area. Shop Direct moved its headquarters to Speke, near the city airport, but still uses the facility at 122 Old Hall Street.
The planning committee meeting where board members will decide on planning permission for Ovatus 1 will take place on Tuesday. In the meantime, Wilcocks and Blackwell have written a letter to Shop Direct listing the measures that could be taken to minimise the effects construction would have on the data center.