Could an environmental legal challenge derail government’s fast-tracked datacentre builds?

A government on a mission

Since coming to power in July 2024, the Labour government has moved swiftly to deliver on its pre-election promise to review a series of proposed, large-scale datacentre developments that had previously been denied planning permission.

This work has seen the government grant outline planning permission for three projects that were previously blocked at local authority level due to concerns that building datacentres on these sites would be an inappropriate use of green belt land.

All three were approved for planning on the approval of former secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, Angela Rayner, without being subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This is a process used to assess whether a proposed development is likely to have a significant impact on the local environment.

John Booth, managing director of sustainability-focused IT consultancy Carbon3IT, is among the IT sustainability experts aghast at the government’s decision to wave these developments through without an EIA first taking place.

“In my experience, a request for outline planning permission always includes an Environmental Impact Screening, basically a note from the developer to the local authority asking whether they need to do an EIA,” he tells Computer Weekly. “In most cases, this is a ‘yes’.”

Projects in profile

The first project to secure government approval is located in Iver, Buckinghamshire, and is being overseen by US investment company Affinius Capital. It got green-lit in December 2024.

The second and third projects are being masterminded by datacentre developer Greystoke. One is based in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, and got approved in May 2025.

The last – and most contentious of these projects – is known as the West London Technology Park (WLTP) development – and is based on a former landfill site in Iver, Buckinghamshire. The government granted permission for that Greystoke development to proceed in early July 2025.

The two local authorities with oversight of these projects – Hertfordshire Borough Council and Buckingham Couty Council – initially stated that all three projects were unlikely to have “significant environmental effects” – so no EIA would be required. This view would later be upheld by the Planning Inspectorate as part of the government’s work to review the projects.

Mark Butcher, founder and director of IT sustainability consultancy Posetiv Cloud, said the omission of an EIA in projects of this size is hugely concerning: “We’re seeing multiple giant hyperscale projects pushed through without Environmental Impact Assessments, and in doing so [the government] are effectively stripping away the exact process designed to test grid resilience, water demand and the cumulative impact of new sites before decisions are made.”

The fact the government has waved three of these projects through in relatively quick succession without any of those checks and balances sets a troubling precedent, added Butcher.

It also comes at a time when the government has committed to pursuing a plan to allow datacentre developers to opt-out of having their site plans assessed by local council planning officers.

As previously detailed by Computer Weekly, the government is pushing for developers to have the option to have their planning permission applications assessed for viability under the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime.

This would allow developers to opt-out of having their site plans assessed by local council planning officers so they can be sent directly to the government’s Planning Inspectorate, who would decide on the secretary of state’s behalf if the projects can proceed.

“Approving hyperscale datacentres without Environmental Impact Assessments or mandatory reporting is short-sighted,” Butcher added. “It sidelines local communities, ignores real energy, carbon and water risks, and leaves no social value behind.”

It also increases the risk of developers experiencing backlash to their plans in the form of negative media attention, local opposition and now the possible threat of legal challenges.

Digging into the legal challenge

After permission was granted for the Greystoke WLTP development to go ahead, a letter – dated 1 August – was sent to former deputy prime minister Rayner, contesting the lawfulness of the government’s decision to approve the project without first conducting an EIA.

The letter, filed on behalf of Foxglove and Global Action Plan, set the government a deadline of 12 August 2025 to respond, but – as confirmed to Computer Weekly – no “substantive response” was received to Foxglove or Global Action Plan’s complaint before this deadline or in the days that followed.

As a result, Foxglove and Global Action Plan moved to file a formal legal challenge in the form of a planning appeal under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, during the week of 21 August 2025.

Computer Weekly contacted the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about the legal action, but was told the department does not comment on live litigation.

It is their hope that Rayner’s approval for the project will be quashed in court, on the basis that no assessment of the potential environmental toll it will have on the local community has taken place.

“This case could set a vital precedent for all future datacentre planning decisions – ensuring environmental and resource impacts must be properly considered before datacentres are approved,” said the Foxglove and Global Action Plan.

The legal action itself has been filed against the government, Greystoke, Buckinghamshire County Council and an unnamed global datacentre provider who has reportedly agreed to acquire the site if and when the planning issues surrounding it are resolved.

This is, according to Foxglove and Global Action Plan, the first legal challenge ever mounted against a government “forcing through a plan” to build a hyperscale datacentre in the UK.

At the time of writing, nearly 600 people have collectively contributed more than £14,000 to a crowdfunding campaign set up by Foxglove and Global Action Plan’s to cover their legal costs.

The WLTM project has already spent three years bouncing around the planning system as Buckinghamshire County Council denied permission for the project twice on Green Belt Protection grounds. So, this latest turn of events could further delay things.

In Butcher’s view, these delays could have been avoided, if an EIA was conducted in the first place: “The massive irony I see is that skipping EIAs and oversight slows the sector down in the long run [because] every approval [could] become a flashpoint for legal challenge, negative media attention and local opposition.

“By contrast, robust EIAs based on provable facts alongside mandatory reporting would de-risk projects, strengthen trust and align national infrastructure with environmental targets.”

Why no EIA?

As previously mentioned, both the local authority and the planning inspectorate, who was called on to compile a report in response to the government reviving the appeal into the Greystoke WLTP development, concluded no EIA was needed for the project.

“The appellant confirmed that the servers would be air cooled, and the demands made on the local water supply with be limited and commensurate with commercial premises of this scale,” the inspector’s report stated.

“The effect of the proposal on local electricity suppliers has been assessed by the grid operator who found no reason to restrict access on the grounds of an adverse effect on electricity supply. In light of the above, I have no reason to disagree with the conclusion that an EIA is not required or that the information submitted at the time of the application was deficient.”

This is a view Foxglove and Global Action Plan have vehemently contested in their 1 August letter, setting out the rationale for their legal challenge.

“Datacentres are extremely resource-intensive, requiring a large amount of power and water to operate,” the letter stated. “The intensity of the anticipated resource usage is likely to have a significant environmental effect and therefore meet the threshold to be considered an EIA development.”

Another point of contention for Foxglove and Global Action Plan is that Greystoke is seeking outline planning permission for its project. This means its application is geared towards ascertaining if its plans are considered an acceptable use of the land in principle.

Once outline planning is approved, a second, more detailed planning application will need to be submitted containing technical details of the build, its appearance, layout, access and so on.  

According to the planning documents for the site, a “global datacentre operator” has provisionally agreed to acquire the site, should outline planning permission be approved, who may have their own ideas about how they will power, cool and operate the site, said Foxglove.

“Greystoke has made a series of promises about how the datacentre will run in future, but given they won’t be the ones in charge of it – and refuse to reveal who will be – it’s impossible to say to what extent, if at all, whoever ends up running the site will be held to the promises Greystoke makes now,” said Foxglove in a statement on its website.

In a separate statement to Computer Weekly, Tom Hegarty, head of communications at Foxglove, expanded on this point, saying it is not right for the government to take the claims of developers at face value.

“Datacentre developers are routinely vague or misleading about the water and power use of new hyperscalers in the pipeline – often claiming, for example, that they will use cooling technologies that don’t need water,” he said. “But we can see from examples around in the world, particularly in the US and Ireland, that these claims shouldn’t be taken at face value.

“Worse still, the mechanism in the planning system to hold datacentre developers to the promises they make is not being properly used by government. They haven’t even bothered to scrutinise the issue of likely water use at the [WLTP] site – instead just taking Greystoke’s word that the finished hyperscale won’t use any for cooling.”

In a statement to Computer Weekly, a Greystoke spokesperson addressed the project’s lack of EIA and said its WLTP plans include measures that will benefit the environment, while also meeting the “vital national need” for digital infrastructure.

“Modern datacentres play a key role in advancing scientific research, medical diagnostics and sustainable energy,” the Greystoke spokesperson said. “The datacentre campus incorporates measures which benefit the environment, including appropriate building standards, solar panels and heat pumps. The secretary of state took all relevant matters into account and reached the right decision in determining to grant planning permission for West London Tech Park.”

Whether or not that planning permission progresses to full buildout hinges on the outcome of the Foxglove and Global Action Plan legal action, and the same could be true of many other large-scale datacentre projects if their bid to quash the WLTP project succeeds.