DataVita DV4 Limited has applied for planning permission in principle for a data centre on 9.67 hectares of green belt land between Lancaster Avenue and the M8, west of Bellside Road. The application reference is 26/01110/PPP. It was signed on 31st August 2026, further documents were added on 3rd September 2026, and the drawings were published on 5th September 2026. Deadline for objections is 3rd October 2026.
UPDATE, 28 September 2026: Following the Scottish Government’s new directive requiring EIAs for all Data Centre planning applications over 50MW, North Lanarkshire Council have confirmed to APRS that the applicant is to conduct an EIA. They also confirmed that once the EIA report is submitted, the application will be advertised as an EIA development, with all previous consultees reconsulted and full neighbour notification undertaken. The planning service will also contact the writers of all currently submitted representations on the application file, to ensure that they are aware of the submission of the full EIA documents. We will update this page once the environmental report is available.
Kate Wheway has produced a briefing document for those wishing to Object to the development, which gives an amazing amount of detail. You can however read the main points for objection below.
Main Points for Objections
The planning portal is open for objections and comments until 3 October. When submitting objections these need to be ‘material considerations’ which means that they must reference National Planning Framework 4 policies and/or the Local Development Plan. Below is a starting point for Objections, with lots more information in the pdf below.
- The developers have not provided enough information for North Lanarkshire Council. For example the impact of the grid connection has not been included in the EIA screening, there is no transport assessment, the is an issue with flooding risk. The council needs to pause the application until sufficient information is provided.
2. The EIA screening was not sufficient – the application should be subject to proper screening (please also email your MSPs about this here)
5. Climate impacts – this is a large data centre and will use a huge amount of energy. In the Energy Report it says that this data centre will use 120MW of electricity, the equivalent of 268,000 homes. It would generate 149,000 tonnes of CO2 a year just from the electricity use not including emissions for the diesel generators – reference
Other areas:
- Lifecycle Greenhouse emissions
- Air Pollution from the generators
- Noise