The town has been written off in the past. Now Slough is one of the most interesting regeneration stories in the South East, with the borough council as the partner for inward investment. We went on a field trip to find out more.
For years, Slough was better known for what it lacked than what it had. A reputation problem made worse by pop culture (Ricky Gervais’s The Office was set there), an ageing high street, a town centre that struggled to compete with neighbours like Reading and Maidenhead.
Yet the underlying ingredients were always there: excellent transport links via the M4, Heathrow on the doorstep, and a young, working population. The question was who would take the risk and build on those foundations.
As the first non-London borough to join Future of London, Slough has strong transport links into the capital and its built environment is going through major change. Daniel Ray, Chief Planning Officer at Slough Borough Council and a candidate of our Leaders Plus 13 cohort, brought us to Slough to see the change up close.
The turning point: a planning experiment in 1996
Slough’s first real reinvention began with a planning decision that few people noticed at the time. In 1995, Slough Borough Council and SEGRO created a simplified planning zone (SPZ) across the Trading Estate, removing the requirement for individual planning applications, provided developers met agreed guidelines. It cut approval times from years to weeks.
CyrusOne is one of several major data centre operators that have built out capacity on the Trading Estate as a result, making it well placed to speak to what the SPZ has meant in practice.
“We love the SPZ because it takes out uncertainty in a process that matters a lot,” explains Emma Fryer, Director of Public Policy, Europe at CyrusOne.
The SPZ worked because it offered something rare: certainty. Single ownership across the estate, secure land tenure, and a clear framework for what could be built. It gave businesses room to plan long-term.
Interestingly, the council’s first instinct was to limit how the estate could be used. “At first, Slough Council wanted to limit office and headquarters expansion in the trading estate because it was against their strategy,” explains Jo Jackson, Director of Thames Valley at SEGRO.
“But now it’s the other way round. Slough is focusing on developing the town centre with amenities and letting other stakeholders develop the trading estate.”
That shift, from restriction to active enabling, set the tone for everything that came next.
How Slough became Europe’s digital hub
The SPZ didn’t originally intend to attract data centres, but Slough happened to have everything they needed: power, water, thanks to its own aquifer, and a position on the main fibre route running from London to North America.
The town now hosts Europe’s largest data centre cluster, generating around £18 million for the council between 2014 and 2024 through the SPZ alone, alongside thousands of jobs in construction, engineering and operations. As Daniel Ray noted, “90 per cent of European internet traffic now goes through Slough.”
Care has gone into how these buildings sit in the landscape. Materials, colours and shapes are designed to blend with the skyline between Slough and Windsor, so the cluster doesn’t overwhelm the historical view of the castle.
A new kind of partnership at Horlicks Quarter
The Trading Estate wasn’t the only place where outside investors saw potential. When the Horlicks factory closed in 2018, Berkeley Group saw an opportunity to build something the town genuinely needed.
“Slough had strong employment nearby, but it lacked good-quality, modern homes fit for purpose, especially for younger buyers and young families,” explains Caroline Crowe, Land and Development Director at Berkeley. Many people working at Heathrow and the surrounding business parks were living in Slough but couldn’t find quality housing that matched their income.
What followed was a different kind of partnership, with the council moving beyond processing applications to actively shaping the project.
Through a planning performance agreement, Berkeley secured consent and started on site within 18 months of purchase. A flexible Section 106 agreement allowed Homes England to support delivery of affordable housing on a site that had an agreed viability position of zero. Slough also doesn’t charge a community infrastructure levy (CIL), freeing up resources for the wider community benefit that would otherwise be locked into fees.
The result is Horlicks Quarter, a development of 1,300 homes, with 576 already completed and over 300 nearing completion in a build-to-rent phase. Roughly 50 per cent of the homes delivered so far are affordable, mostly at social rent levels.
At the centre of the new neighbourhood sits the restored Horlicks factory, with its chimney and clocktower carefully preserved. This was a deliberate effort to protect the town’s identity and the memory of generations who built their lives around the site.
“Everyone in the local area knows somebody who once worked in the factory,” Caroline adds. “We saw it as an opportunity to keep that history alive and make the people of Slough proud.”
Horlicks has become a working example of what this kind of council-developer partnership can deliver when both sides commit to it.
As Freddie Hill, Head of Development at Berkeley Group, concluded: “The discussions with the council were sometimes tough but remained open and honest which resulted in a good, balanced scheme.”
From a single site to the whole town centre
The success at Horlicks gave Slough and Berkeley the confidence to think bigger. When the Queensmere and Observatory shopping centres came to market, Berkeley bought them outright, taking on a 9.2-acre site with outline planning for 1,600 new homes. Resolution to grant planning permission has since been secured for Phase 1, comprising 359 homes alongside retail, leisure and public realm.
From the outset, the plan was to demolish Queensmere and rebuild it as part of a much larger residential-led scheme. The centre closed permanently in January 2026 ahead of demolition next spring, with construction of new homes scheduled to begin in 2028 and the first residents moving in by 2031.
Many of the existing retailers have relocated to the neighbouring Observatory centre, which Berkeley is keeping open and refurbishing as part of the wider scheme.
It’s a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain, and Pat Hayes, Executive Director of Regeneration, Environment and Planning at Slough Council, is candid about that trade-off.
“This process effectively killed the existing town centre, with almost every unit becoming vacant,” Pat explains, “but we’re now transitioning to a very different kind of town centre, and it reflects a new approach to transforming town centres.”
Slough focuses firmly on the long-term benefits of regeneration and the placemaking opportunities it brings like better homes, better public spaces, and a better experience for everyone.
A town finding its second act
Despite its economic, reputational and cultural knocks, Slough is now taking an active role in shaping its own future.
By learning from what the SPZ achieved; building genuine partnerships with developers like Berkeley, and through hard conversations about what a 21st-century town centre should look like, Slough is shaping its own future.
The transformation won’t happen overnight, with Berkeley’s town centre programme alone running to 2039.
But regeneration of this scale rarely does, and when the council, developers and community share a clear direction, the long-term reward is a town that becomes a better place to live, work and thrive.
Future of London member Slough Borough Council is showing how local authorities can move beyond enabling and become genuine partners in regeneration. The lesson for other boroughs: councils have more power than they think when they’re willing to use it.