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 Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Deputy Prime Minister, granted outline planning permission for the site near Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, previously rejected by Three Rivers District Council in January 2024.

It is understood that the council turned down the application on several grounds, including the significant landscape and visual harm posed by the development, and concerns that the proposal did not meet the policy tests for acceptable development in the Green Belt.

However, as the letter notes, a revised version of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is now in force, which introduces a number of changes in relation to both green belt guidelines and datacenters.

These changes now require local authority planning policies to identify suitable locations for datacenters, as well as other uses such as laboratories, gigafactories, digital infrastructure, freight, and logistics.

In the letter, the Secretary of State agrees with the Inspector overseeing the planning appeal that insufficient suitable alternative sites are available to meet such needs, and this is one reason that appears to have swung the decision.

According to the developer Greystoke, the plans are for a 96 MW datacenter of up to 84,000 sqm (900,000 sq ft) delivered across two buildings, plus ancillary offices and buildings housing electrical equipment and backup generators on the site, which is bounded on the north by the M25 orbital motorway that encircles London.

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.

As The Register warned last year, changes introduced by the then newly elected Labour government, such as designating datacenters as critical national infrastructure (CNI), mean they are no longer subject to the same planning restrictions as before, allowing developers to override local objections to them being built.

On the Three Rivers District Council website, council leader Stephen Giles-Medhurst said he was deeply disappointed in the Secretary of State's decision.

"Despite the people of Abbots Langley and further afield not welcoming this application and us fighting tooth and nail to protect this green space, both the Planning Inspector and the Secretary of State believed that the datacenter did not constitute inappropriate development in the green belt, even though they acknowledged that it would result in landscape and visual harm to the area and to the heritage assets at the Tithe Barn and Mansion House Farmhouse," he wrote.

"In my view, as Leader of Three Rivers District Council, there is little gain for the village apart from an extra country park and some low-level employment. What this decision means is putting up with mega warehouse-type buildings across our green belt," Cllr Giles-Medhurst added, reflecting the fact that datacenters actually deliver few new jobs in the surrounding area, once all the construction has finished and the site becomes operational.

However, development consultancy Pegasus Group, which helped Greystoke with its appeal, said the project will meet an identified need for datacenter development and the decision responds to recent changes to the NPPF, which explicitly refer to such facilities.

"It was recognized that there would be harm in terms of landscape and visual impact and also some harm to both designated and non-designated heritage assets, but the overall conclusion was that the appeal should be allowed," Pegasus Group stated.

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Land overlooking London's M25 orbital highway seems to be popular with bit barn developers just recently. Earlier this year, approval was granted for a mega facility billed as Europe's largest cloud and AI datacenter at a site also in Hertfordshire, near South Mimms, about 10 miles away from Abbots Langley.  

Earlier, an application for another site, Woodlands Park, near Iver in Buckinghamshire, was rejected by the local council on the grounds it would alter the character and appearance of the area, despite recognition there was significant demand for datacenter capacity nearby.

That latter project was also being managed by Greystoke, and we understand it is also subject to an appeal, now that the planning restrictions have been bypassed revised. ®

Updated to add on Monday May 19

When we put the concerns to Greystoke, a spokesperson said: "We welcome the Secretary of State's decision. Abbots Langley datacenter will attract more than £1 billion of investment and help to secure thousands of digital jobs across the country. The government's positive approach to building datacenters is a significant step forward for the UK's economic growth and digital leadership."