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Carillion’s collapse created real risks of construction delays and contract disruption, but the available evidence does not establish that it caused UK data centres to go offline. One vendor case study links Carillion Amey to a Defence Infrastructure Organisation data-centre project; a 2026 trade-news report says the collapse contributed to delays involving Slough Data Centre Campus Phase 2. Those are project-delivery claims, not proof of operational outages.

What happened when Carillion collapsed?

Carillion entered insolvency on 15 January 2018. The British construction and facilities-management company had a substantial public-sector footprint. The National Audit Office (NAO) reported that around 420 UK public-sector contracts were in place at liquidation; its count included direct contracts, subcontracting and special-purpose vehicles. The NAO’s 2018 investigation also emphasized that a major supplier’s dependencies can extend beyond the boundaries of individual contracts.

The Official Receiver continued trading service contracts during liquidation so customers could decide which services to continue and transfer. In August 2018, the Insolvency Service said transfer arrangements were in place for the last of 278 contracts provided by the Carillion group. It reported that essential public services continued during the liquidation trading period without service disruption or major incidents. The Insolvency Service update describes continuity across essential services; it is not a site-by-site account of every public or private contract.

The two contract figures describe different reporting contexts and should not be treated as competing totals: the NAO’s approximately 420 public-sector contracts at liquidation and the Insolvency Service’s 278 contracts with transfer arrangements at the end of the trading phase.

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What evidence connects Carillion to data-centre work?

Defence Infrastructure Organisation project

A Workspace Technology case study identifies Carillion Amey as a partner on a Defence Infrastructure Organisation data-centre project, with Workspace Technology providing design and construction work. This establishes a connection to project delivery. The case study does not, by itself, establish that the project was delayed or that a data centre lost service.

Slough Data Centre Campus Phase 2

A May 2026 report by ET Datacenters / Economic Times says Carillion’s collapse contributed to construction delays and financial disruption, naming Slough Data Centre Campus Phase 2. That is a claim by the trade-news report, not a verified operational incident report. The article does not establish a site-level timeline, the duration or exact consequences of the reported delay, or an outage. It attaches a value of £200 million to the project; that figure is attributed to the report, not independently confirmed here.

Did data centres go offline because of the collapse?

The evidence cited here does not verify a data-centre outage caused by Carillion’s collapse. The documented and reported consequences concern involvement in a construction project and alleged project delays, which are distinct from interruption to a facility already providing service. The government’s statement that essential public services continued without disruption or major incidents is relevant context, but it does not prove the status of every data-centre project or private facility.

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Why a contractor collapse can affect a data-centre project

A data-centre build can depend on multiple contractors and service providers. If a participant becomes insolvent, the consequences depend on its role and the work underway: replacing a construction partner can affect schedule or cost, while interruption to a live facilities-service contract raises a different continuity question. Carillion’s case also illustrates the broader supplier-dependency concern identified by the NAO: a strategically important supplier can create dependencies beyond any single contract.

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For any specific project, distinguish among these possible outcomes rather than treating “disruption” as synonymous with an outage:

  • Construction delay: planned work or project completion moves later.
  • Financial disruption: the client or other parties face costs or contract uncertainty.
  • Contract transfer: a replacement provider takes on ongoing services or work.
  • Operational outage: a live data-centre service becomes unavailable. The cited Carillion evidence does not establish this outcome.

What the Carillion figures do—and do not—show

Other figures describe the collapse’s wider public-sector reach, not the number of data centres affected. The House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee cited Local Government Association figures of 30 councils and 220 schools directly affected in 2018. The committee’s report does not turn those figures into evidence of data-centre outages.

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These counts answer different questions: the NAO’s approximately 420 refers to public-sector contracts at liquidation; the Insolvency Service’s 278 refers to contracts for which transfer arrangements were in place by the end of liquidation trading; and the council and school figures refer to entities the Local Government Association described as directly affected. None is a count of data-centre facilities disrupted.

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What this means for UK data-centre continuity

Carillion’s collapse is best understood as a warning about supplier and project-delivery exposure, not proof that UK data centres suffered service outages. Continuity depends on the specific contract, whether the supplier is a main contractor or partner, the work’s construction or operational stage, and whether a replacement provider can take over. In this case, official reporting documents continuity arrangements for essential public services, while the available data-centre-specific claims concern project participation and reported construction delay.

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