UK court gives go-ahead to challenge to large data centre

UK’s approval for a hyperscale data centre just outside London will come under scrutiny, after campaigners were on Thursday granted permission to bring a first of its kind legal challenge over the project.

Plans for a 90MW data centre in Buckinghamshire were approved by the government last year, after the local authority had refused permission.

UK non-profit Foxglove and environmental charity Global Action Plan argued ministers failed to consider the impact on climate change of the vast amount of electricity the data centre will need.

Global data centre demand and planned projects have surged since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, as investors and governments bet on generative AI, increasing demand for electricity capacity to power the centres.

The groups’ lawyers say the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government (MHCLG) also failed to assess the “much larger amounts of additional electricity” to power and cool” computers, as opposed to the data centre’s office functions.

Greystoke Land, which is developing the site, argued the project was lawfully approved and said the legal challenge should not go ahead.

But officials at MHCLG, in a letter to London’s High Court this week, accepted permission for the project should be quashed as it was granted on the basis of climate mitigation measures which were then not secured.

The High Court granted Foxglove and Global Action Plan the go-ahead to challenge the decision at a hearing on Thursday, meaning a full hearing of their case is due later this year.

Foxglove and Global Action Plan say theirs is the first legal challenge to a hyperscale data centre in UK.