Slough Borough Council has expressed disappointment after Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook granted planning permission for a major data centre development on green belt land near Heathrow Airport.
The decision follows a recommendation from the Planning Inspectorate, which considered an appeal by developer Tritax Big Box after Slough BC failed to determine the original application within the required timeframe.
The 20-acre site will house a data centre, battery energy storage system (BESS) and supporting infrastructure. Pennycook said there was a ‘clear need for the proposed development’ given what he described as ‘unprecedented demand for data centres’ nationally.
However, a council spokesperson criticised the application as ‘speculative’ and argued the site was ‘not the right location for a data centre.’
The spokesperson pointed out that multiple consents already exist for several hundred megawatts of additional data centre capacity in the borough, with overall capacity likely to triple within the next few years. Despite this, they said, ‘the Government have decided that this is not enough.’
