Data · Datacenter Dynamics
Data centers in the UK stymied by "inadequate community engagement" - report
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Data center planning in the UK is being delayed by "inadequate community engagement,” according to a report by British engineering consultancy firm Hoare Lea.
Key facts
- The report was published yesterday, weeks after frontier lab OpenAI decided to drop out of its £31 billion ($41.6bn) Stargate UK data center investment on the basis that the “right conditions,” such
- In December 2024, the former Secretary for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner, overturned a local council’s rejection to greenlight a 140MW development at the Court Lane
- The firm found that the average time to secure planning consent for a data center was 490 days – around one and a half years – based on the firm’s analysis of 33 unnamed data center planning
- Concern about the environment was cited as a cause of opposition in 32 of these applications, followed by poor community engagement and personal feelings around the application, both
Summary
The report was published yesterday, weeks after frontier lab OpenAI decided to drop out of its £31 billion ($41.6bn) Stargate UK data center investment on the basis that the “right conditions,” such as the cost of energy and regulation, had not been met. The firm found that the average time to secure planning consent for a data center was 490 days – around one and a half years – based on the firm’s analysis of 33 unnamed data center planning applications in the country. The longest planning time amongst the 33 projects surveyed was over five years. But given that the raw data of these projects was not provided by the report, it is unclear the extent to which this project’s planning time is an outlier.