The government has been forced to admit its own planning approval for a major AI datacentre should be quashed after it failed to fully consider the climate impact, in what campaigners described as “an embarrassing climbdown”.
Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, had overruled opposition from a local council to grant permission for a hyperscale datacentre on greenbelt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire in line with Labour’s pledge to enable faster private investment in AI. But her successor, Steve Reed, has admitted the reasons for not requiring an environmental impact assessment were “inadequate” and that “permission should be quashed”.
The government had made a “serious logical error”, it conceded, during a legal challenge to the approval this week.
The scheme, also known as the West London Technology Park, has been hailed by promoters as having the potential to attract £1bn of foreign direct investment. The U-turn comes after environmental campaigners concerned about the carbon emissions and water use of energy-hungry datacentres claimed the approval was unlawful.
They accused the government of being too accepting of the developer’s assurances about the environmental impact and failing to properly consider the energy use.
The case is a blow to the government’s strategy of accelerating the construction of datacentres to attract investment from technology companies. In September 2024 it designated datacentres – which train and operate AI systems – as critical national infrastructure, signalling their importance to the British economy. Peter Kyle, the former technology secretary, called them “the engines of modern life, they power the digital economy and keep our most personal information safe”.
The 72,000 sq metre (18-acre) datacentre on a former landfill site in Iver is being developed by Greystoke, which declined to comment.
“It shouldn’t take us having to drag the government to court for them to admit their decision to back big tech’s polluting datacentres was fundamentally wrong,” said Rosa Curling, a co-executive director of the tech equity organisation Foxglove.
“For too long, ministers have been putting the profits of Trump-supporting tech billionaires ahead of the interests of the British public. Nowhere has this been clearer than their willingness to force through massive datacentres against the wishes of the local community, without a thought for the catastrophic damage they will cause to our environment.”
Sonja Graham, the chief executive of Global Action Plan, an environmental charity that was part of the legal challenge, said: “This embarrassing climbdown could have been avoided had the government done its job and scrutinised big tech’s flimsy carbon commitments in the first place.”
She added: “People across the UK are increasingly concerned about datacentres’ proliferation and what it means for access to water and power. The government being asleep at the wheel like this will do nothing to reassure them.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the government had confirmed to the court on Monday that the secretary of state wished to concede the challenge and accepted that permission should be quashed.
The UK had approximately 1.6 gigawatts of datacentre capacity in 2024, which is forecast to rise up to four times by 2030. However, that may still not be enough to meet demand, government analysis found.
Last year Kyle attacked the “archaic planning processes” holding up the construction of technology infrastructure and said: “The datacentres we need to power our digital economy get blocked because they ruin the view from the M25.”
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