The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire.
Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part of the Labour government’s push to turn the UK into an AI powerhouse by trebling computing capacity to meet rising demand amid what it terms “a global race” as AI usage takes off.
The home counties datacentre is relatively small compared with one planned in north Lincolnshire that will have about 10 times the capacity, and is dwarfed by one planned by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg in Louisiana, which will be more than 50 times larger as he seeks to achieve digital “superintelligence”.
But Foxglove, the tech equity campaign group bringing the legal challenge alongside the environmental charity Global Action Plan, said the energy demand could push up local electricity prices and said it was “baffling” that the government had not carried out an environmental assessment.
Oliver Hayes, the head of campaigns at Global Action Plan, said Rayner’s “lack of meaningful scrutiny” was a worrying signal as more datacentres were planned around the UK. “Are the societal benefits of chatbots and deepfakes really worth sacrificing progress towards a safe climate and dependable water supply?” he said. “The government must reconsider its rash decision or risk an embarrassing reality check in court.”
Last June, Buckinghamshire council refused planning permission for the facility in Iver on what was once a landfill site, saying it “would constitute inappropriate development in the green belt” and would harm the appearance of the area, air quality and habitats of protected species.
Local objectors said the two buildings rising to 18 metres would “dwarf the area” and would be an “eyesore” for ramblers, and that there were more appropriate brownfield sites. Other locals complained datacentres were intrusive and noisy and provided few jobs, although the applicant, Greystoke, claims it will create about 230 jobs and support hundreds more in the wider economy.
Following an appeal against the refusal, a public inquiry favoured consent, concluding that no environmental impact assessment was needed.
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In March, the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, attacked the “archaic planning processes” holding up the construction of technology infrastructure and complained that “the datacentres we need to power our digital economy get blocked because they ruin the view from the M25”.
Rayner granted planning permission last month in what was seen as an example of the government’s pro-development “grey belt” strategy to build on green belt land viewed as of lower environmental value.
But Rosa Curling, co-executive director of Foxglove, said that thanks to Rayner’s decision, “local people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with the power-guzzling behemoth to keep the lights on – which, as we’ve seen in the (United) States, usually means sky-high prices”.
The energy industry has estimated the rapid adoption of AI could mean datacentres will account for a 10th of electricity demand in Great Britain by 2050, five to 10 times more than today. And while the Iver datacentre is proposed to be air-cooled, many use vast quantities of water. In March, Thames Water warned that its region was “seriously water-stressed … and yet there could be as many as 70 new datacentres in our area over the next few years, with each one potentially using upwards of 1,000 litres of water per second, or the equivalent of 24,000 homes’ usage”.
A spokesperson for Greystoke said Rayner had reached the right decision and recognised that the datacentre “meets a vital national need for digital infrastructure, and will bring over £1bn of investment, transforming a former landfill site next to the M25”.
“Modern datacentres play a key role in advancing scientific research, medical diagnostics and sustainable energy,” they said. “The datacentre campus incorporates measures which benefit the environment, including appropriate building standards, solar panels and heat pumps.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government declined to comment on threats of legal action.
