UK government overrules local council’s datacenter refusal on Green Belt land

The British government has stepped in to overturn a local council's refusal of a proposed datacenter on green belt land, citing updated national planning policy that urges councils to find space for bit barns, labs, gigafactories, and other strategic infrastructure. In a letter [PDF] published this week, Angela Rayner, the …

[Lon24]

Green Noise & Green Energy

I am a true green supporter. As such I ride the lanes bordering the M25 (in order to escape to real countryside). I always regard the corridor a mile wide along the M25 route as a special place in hell. It may be green but to enjoy it is impossible with the 24/7 cacophony of heavy traffic. Pity of those that have to live within it. If we have to sacrifice green land - this is a bit that maybe we can afford.

But where is the 96MW going to come from? Does the billion include some additional green renewable generation?

[codejunky]

Re: Green Noise & Green Energy

@Lon24

"But where is the 96MW going to come from?"

We have no reason to worry. Energy generation has had money thrown at it since the Blair years. We even have increased bills to fund subsidies for energy generation. And Milliband said our bills will fall as he pushes for more generation. Its a good job the gov didnt push smart meters with kill switches, they obviously have no need for the feature.

The result of a bad winter--->

[vogon00]

Practical Planning..

Lovely. More DC / Compute space for Cloudy AI etc. Let's go ahead and build a few of these with =>100MWe consumption.

...(some time later)...

Yippee! Building complete, internal infrastructure complete and populated....GO!

...(short time later)...

What do you mean when you say "Oooops, there is no short or medium term probability of an adequate electricity supply being available"?

It's all very well having the 'Field Of Dreams' mentality, but at least make sure there's a chance of your required energy / resource infrastructures being available at both the right monetary and non-monetary costs. I for one want to see what Three Rivers District Council et al have to say when the a DC operator applies for permission for a fleet of fission SMRs in Hertfordshire :-)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Practical Planning..

That's the failure of Labour laissez-faire capitalism, we need to bring back Tory central planning and their 5year plan for electrification of the motherland

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Practical Planning..

Maybe I have been on the Friday night whiskey too early but I had to read that three times before it didn't say enshittification of the motherland. Not sure it's a meaningful difference here.

[ChrisElvidge]

"Also included is a plan to create a country park the size of 25 football pitches for local residents, on nearby land which is currently private. To sweeten the deal, Greystoke is also offering £12 million ($15.9 million) set aside for local education and training, and it claims the site represents an investment of more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in the area."

Get the plan in writing first. Make sure there are enough safeguards for when the developer says "Sorry, we can't do this now, It will cost too much."

[Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?]

100% this.

In fact, I'd specify in the agreement that no work whatsoever could be started on the main project until the 'Public good' element has been all but completed.

[elsergiovolador]

£12 million ($15.9 million) set aside for local education and training

Would money go to usual suspects?

Would that be pre made power point presentation with check box test at the end?

an investment of more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in the area

Is money going to trickle down?

[Anonymous Coward]

football pitches

25 football pitches... that's 5 by 5, so about 500 m by 320 m. A nice space, but not huge.

Oh - but - I wonder if that's where the pylons are going?

Cynical, moi?

[Lon24]

Re: football pitches

You are so right. Appalling failure by the Vulture correspondent to translate area into terms we can all recognise ie 3.125 E-08 Waleses (given a magnitude or two)

[ecofeco]

100% this.

Promises made always end up being promises broken when it comes to giving something to us peons.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: a plan to create a country park the size of 25 football pitches

Hmm, I wonder if they had ever considered that some cynic (such as me) would point out that that represents 100 goalposts waiting to be surreptitiously rearranged according to the whims of the developer.

[Richard 12]

Section 106 or CIL, or?

Section 106 money is notoriously difficult to usefully spend as it ends up with weird conditions about exactly what can be done with it.

Medway Council

Community Infrastructure Levy is a new way of doing it that supposedly is more useful, but I don't think many places have actually done anything with it yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, happened near me, PP granted for a new factory conditional on them building multi storey parking. Broke earth on the factory "oh dear sorry, too expensive to build the parking" and the local authority were too cowardly to fight.

[Caver_Dave]

Yes, in my country a new mega housing estate with shops, primary school and combined doctors/dentists/primary care hub. After 10 years nearly all the houses are built, but nothing else has appeared. I don't hold any hope. The 'extras' should always be built as soon as their is enough population to support them and not forgotten at the end of the house building.

[elsergiovolador]

96MW

"96MW" what does that even mean?

Is it coming from one power station, combined? Any on site generators with that capacity?

If there is just one connection to power station, then it is not a data centre, just a massive shed.

[steamnut]

Clearly the original brown envelopes were not fat enough.

Getting Starmer's lot to sort it was the best next option.

That said, where is the 96MW of electricity going to come from?

[exovert]

France - & Belgium et al

https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

17.3% at time of writing

[Sam Crawley]

Why not brownfield?

I do not understand why these cannot be built on brownfield industrial sites? These are likely to have the road infrastructure for construction traffic, will have decent power sources even if an upgrade may be required, will be suitably distanced from residential areas, need the jobs, and it probably doesn't matter if there is historical ground pollution if a large concrete platform will be stuck on it. Sticking them on actual green land close to London against locals wishes seems short-sighted, unnecessary and greedy - tell me there's not a suitable derelect site in, for example, the Tottenham / Lea Valley corridor that could be repurposed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not brownfield?

Brownfield land is expensive. Greenbelt land is cheap because you are not allowed to build on it. There are vast amount of money to be made by buying up cheap greenbelt land and then subverting the planning laws to get permission to build on it.

That is the ONLY reason why they keep trying to build on the greenbelt. There are plenty of brownfield sites and greenfield sites (not greenbelt), but they cost more.

[Mr Dogshit]

Re: Why not brownfield?

You ideally want to locate a data centre so that it can be fed from two separate electrical supplies, from different providers, coming into the site from opposite sides. There are certain places where that's geographically doable, others less so.

If you just have one electricity supply, then you're got a Tier 1 data centre. Not a lot of point to that due to that single point of failure.

[Tron]

Re: Why not brownfield?

They may not be bothered about the power issue. If the AI bubble bursts, they have already turned greenbelt land into a brownfield site. They can then knock the unused shed down and build a housing estate in its place.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Why not brownfield?

At least a housing estate is of utility to actual people but it's likely to be a collection of super expensive 6 bedroom executive homes

[martin 62]

from????

The power grid where else. They will likely put solar panels on the roof of the buildings but that won't be nowhere near enough to cover the leccy needs. they will likely have generators but for emergency power backup only as running them 24/7 would be too expensive.

[VicMortimer]

Re: from????

Elmo has built a data center near Memphis that has "portable" gas turbine generators running 24/7. They've asked TVA for power, but he's not managed to bully the TVA board into approving it. And because the generators are "portable" they don't have emission controls. It's literally putting people in the hospital with the pollution.

‘How come I can’t breathe?': Musk’s data company draws a backlash in Memphis

[Phil O'Sophical]

visual impact?

Datacentres don't need windows, if visual impact is a concern why not build them underground? Gives you well-insulated walls as well.

[Mr Dogshit]

Re: visual impact?

Ideally you want your data centre to be above the water table. That way, a local flood won't fill your building with H2O.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: visual impact?

Thames Water's new sewage-cooled servers - ideal for Facebook/Twitter/etc

[ecofeco]

What?

No empty factories around? Abandoned neighborhoods? It HAD to be a greenspace?

Tech douche bros always gonna tech douche bro.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: What?

>No empty factories around? Abandoned neighborhoods?

Not inside the M25

Outside the M25 is, as we all know, a barren wilderness of white walkers, zombies and notherners

[andrewj]

What an absolute disgrace to pave over pristine countryside so people can generate more stupid AI shit in social media apps.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

It's inside the M25 so at best it's pristine intensively farmed land - this is not exactly the Amazon rainforest.

[martinusher]

Excuse me, AI can generate lots of images, still and moving, of pristine countryside. The real thing's both messy and makes inefficient use of space.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Or more likely

after planning permission and the bit barn has been built, the AI bubble goes POP, the servers are dumped and the barn is sold to the likes of Amazon as a depot, followed by Amazon 'consoldating' their depots into one site and selling off this one to a property developer, who then can build Sunny bridge garden village, a new exclusive village of 6000 homes next to the M25 and easy access of rural england (plus a 96Mw power supply)

I used to be cynical, but been proved right too many times

[Richard 12]

We need regional industrial electricity pricing

If industrial electricity in (eg) Scotland became significantly cheaper than inside the M25, a lot of these bitbarns would suddenly realise that they don't need to be near London.

Then we wouldn't need to build suchbmassive interconnects either.

Transporting power is orders of magnitude more expensive than the associated data, and for the vast majority of purposes (246% of AI) the change in latency is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't belieeeeve it

I find it hard to believe that brownfield sites cannot be found. I put on my tin foil hat and wonder why farming is being attacked from multiple cuts after Larry Fink and Bill Gates have been visiting a prime minister that admits he prefers working with Davos to Parliament. Food production is a critical infrastructure especially in an unstable world and our glorious leader wants to go to war with Russia. I mean what next, fight America? Luckily I think it's all talk.

[Anonymous Coward]

Labour cares deeply about the environment...

...all the way to the bottom of the developers' pockets.

Remember all the schemes the Tories proposed that Labour blocked because of the (potential) environmental damage? All the schemes Labour supported because they (allegedly) safeguard the environment and out (anticipated) quality of life?

And now they are in power again, they return to exactly the same policies of building on greenbelt and greenfield sites because those are normally owned or enjoyed by people who don't want to live in concrete jungles and the politicians antipathy towards "country folk".

And strangely the Greens still spend more time sweet-talking Labour in their feeble attempts to hold on to their tiny bit of power than they do fighting labour's ruinous plans for the countryside. That is an even bigger problem, but somehow people are too busy bashing the "gammon" who support Reform and ignoring the current government destroying our ever-dwindling green spaces.