The Secretary of State has granted planning permission for a data centre at Abbots Landley. The decision gives an insight into the planning issues likely to be an issue for data centres.
Locational requirements
Data centres have specific locational requirements, which limit the availability of potential sites.
The Abbots Landley development is a hyperscale cloud data centre, to support the needs of cloud-based businesses and applications. The locational requirements for cloud data centres include proximity to other cloud data centres within an “availability zone”.
In the Abbots Landley decision, the Secretary of State gave significant weight to the insufficiency of alternative sites available to meet need.
Other types of data centres include enterprise data centres, which are owned by an individual company for its own purposes, disaster recovery centres, which provide a backup facility, and AI data centres, for AI learning.
Green data centres
Scotland’s National Planning Framework 4 classes green data centres as national development. No definition is provided, so locational requirements are unclear.
National developments still require to obtain planning permission in the normal way, but the designation establishes the need for the development.
Planning designations
Locational requirements can result in developments being proposed on sites within designated areas. The Abbots Landley development is on a green belt site.
The terms of the relevant planning policy need to be taken into account. For example, in a recent Scottish appeal decision for a battery storage project, the policy provided support in principle, but five separate criteria relating to the effects on the green belt had to be considered.
The Secretary of State found that the Abbots Landley site does not strongly contribute to several green belt purposes, but still considered it acceptable in the planning balance.
Location, location, location
A key motto of the planning system is that every proposal is considered on its individual merits. Most planning considerations stem from the location of the development.
The size and containment of the Abbots Landley site meant that the development will not fundamentally undermine the green belt. The visual effect of the development will be relatively localised.
Comments
Data centres are not new, but there is a growing focus on their potential in Scotland and outside of London (where the majority of data centres currently exist) and they do present some challenges in planning terms. What we have sought to highlight in this blog, however, despite specific considerations relevant to data centres, the same principles apply as with any other development – a data centre proposal needs to be considered in accordance with the development unless material considerations require otherwise. We don't need a novel approach to assessing such applications, albeit they may give rise to some novel considerations.
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