The new Housing and Communities Secretary, Angela Rayner, has reopened two large data centre projects in Southeast England recently blocked by local councils.
Investment company Greystoke Land had proposed building hyperscale data centres in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, and Iver, Buckinghamshire. Both plans involved building on green belt land and were rejected by the Three Rivers District Council in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire Council.
However, Angela Rayner will ‘call in’ these proposals. This means the decision will be made by the local planning authority and reviewed by a planning inspector, who will recommend Rayner. The call-in power is rarely used and is reserved for projects where local decisions might conflict with national policies or significantly impact economic growth beyond a single authority.
The site in Iver is green belt land, but it is a former landfill site. It is an example of what the government calls a ‘grey belt’ site – technically within the green belt but neither green nor pleasant.
Buckinghamshire Council first refused the proposal in 2022. According to the developers, it would have been worth £2.5 billion to the UK economy and created 370 jobs.
The developers appealed, and the local government minister Lee Rowley (whose boss was the then Levelling-Up Housing, Communities Secretary Michael Gove) eventually reviewed the decision. He rejected the appeal, stating that the plans would “significantly harm” the view of the Green Belt from the M25 and lead to “unrestricted sprawl of a large built-up area.”
The developers resubmitted plans for a smaller datacentre on the same site, this time a 72,000 sq m site with “landscape-led” buildings and “living green walls.”
Buckinghamshire Council rejected this plan last month.
The proposed plan for the site in Abbots Langley has less history and was unanimously blocked by Three Rivers Council in January. An appeal was lodged with the planning inspectorate last month, with findings due to be announced in October.
Greystoke Land, the potential developers of both sites, acknowledge that the plan will damage the openness of the green belt land. However, they argue that given the site’s proximity to the M25, the economic benefits outweigh the harms.
The Deputy Prime Minister has said that when she intervenes in the economic planning system, the benefit of development will be a central consideration and that she will not hesitate to review an application where the potential gain for the regional and national economies warrant it … and I welcome her decision to recover two planning appeals already, for data centres in Buckinghamshire and in Hertfordshire.
