An application for Planning in Principle has been received for a data centre on a site with current planning permission for a mixed use development of housing, leisure and business, with plans to reopen the IBM railway station to help commuters. The 28 Hectare site is now a proposed hyperscale data centre with c 80,000 m2 buildings, eighteen metres high. A The deadline for objections of 16 September.
This story was covered in:
- The National Campaigners slam plans for huge Greenock data centre
- The Times Huge data centre planned instead of 450 homes at former IBM site
For immediate release:
Plans have been submitted for a hyperscale data centre in Greenock on the 28 hectare site of the old IBM site which would replace plans to develop the area into mixed use development with 450 homes retail and to reopen the train station as a park and ride. The deadline for comments is 16th September and APRS is calling on people to submit their comments.
The plans for the data centre do not indicate the power demand, but they do indicate that it will be nearly 80,000m2 and 18m high, meaning it is likely to be in the region of 200-300MW if compared to similar sized sites in Scotland.
On 18th August, the Minister for Public Finance Hannah Mary Goodlad announced that local authorities must alert the Scottish Government when a planning application for a data centre above 50MW is received. In the case at Inverclyde, where there is no indication of the capacity of the data centre, it is unclear how this reporting will happen.
This development also appears to be missing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening, which is not online. The application document says that an EIA screening was submitted and the authority decided that they didn’t need to do an EIA, but the developer’s website claims that the existing EIA for the housing is largely valid and that updated reports will be submitted with the application. No information is available about either of these on the Inverclyde planning portal.
Developers must submit an Environmental Impact Assessment screening for large developments which lays out a summary so that the local authority can decide whether an EIA is required or not. In this case it either hasn’t been done, or isn’t in the public domain, and campaigners are calling for the local authority to put a pause on the application while they ask the developer to provide all the information necessary to properly consider the application.
Action to Protect Rural Scotland has written to the Scottish Government to alert them to the fact that this application has been submitted, and that the local authority may have missed the requirement to report it because of a lack of information. She also asked that they require that this site do an EIA and that measures be put in place that require developers to submit full planning applications, rather than planning permission in principle, so that vital information like power capacity is not missed.
APRS are calling for all hyperscale data centres to be required to do an Environmental Impact Assessment and their latest letter to Hannah Mary Goodlad, following her announcements last week on hyperscale data centres, asked that the Scottish government put in guidance to ask data centre developers to submit full planning applications and to encourage local authorities to use their powers to request further information from data centre developers.
The Ravenscraig hyperscale data centre development is also planned on land that is intended for homes, with the East site of the data centre replacing 1000 homes. https://aprs.scot/news/
Kat Jones, Director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland said:
“There is so much missing in this proposal, it is just a back of the envelope application from a speculative developer who thinks they can make more money from a data centre than building homes. Inverclyde council must stop the application until they can provide sufficient information about the planned development.
“This application, and the 600MW Auchtertool proposal, are perfect illustrations of why it is not appropriate for a development of this scale and impact to be allowed to submit a planning permission in principle application. It means that developers are able to get away with the vaguest of statements about the plans and what the environmental impacts will be. There is virtually no detail in this application that would allow the planners to properly consider it. The planning authority must halt the process on this application until there is sufficient information and background work provided, including an EIA screening and a requirement to produce an EIA.”
“There is an extremely narrow window of opportunity for commenting on this application and we are encouraging anyone who is concerned about this development to look at the summary we have provided on our website, which should help people to respond to the application.”
Matt Bernico, a local and volunteer organiser for No AI Data Centres – Inverclyde said:
“Inverclyde was promised a £100 million masterplan to breathe new life into Spango Valley, which would have delivered much-needed homes and reopening a previously closed railway station. Instead, billionaire developers Sandy and James Easdale have scrapped those community promises because they decided housing ‘no longer made financial sense.’ Now, they are trying to push through a massive 80,000-square-metre hyperscale AI data centre under ‘planning permission in principle’ which in practice completely bypasses environmental scrutiny.
“This is a classic case of billionaire profits taking precedence over local needs. We are being asked to sacrifice our land to pollution and noise to massive fossil fuel backup generators, and strain our green electricity grid all for a facility that creates virtually no long-term local jobs. We support Action to Protect Rural Scotland in calling for an immediate moratorium on these giant projects until full Environmental Impact Assessments are made legally mandatory. Inverclyde is our community, not a playground for Big Tech and billionaire land developers.”
There is more information on the planned development on the APRS website:
There is more information about APRS’s Data Centre Campaign here:
www.aprs.scot/data-centre-campaign
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